The Labor Department’s employment report for December will arrive on Friday, offering some clearer perspective on a labor market that saw wild swings in hiring after labor strikes and hurricanes.
Most signs have pointed to slow but respectable growth at the end of the year: The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg is that 165,000 jobs were added last month, seasonally adjusted, with the unemployment rate remaining 4.2 percent.
That would be just slightly below the average over the previous three months, which was 173,000, pending revisions.
Monthly volatility aside, the pace appears remarkably consistent over the longer term — but other data reveal a rapid cool-down. The number of job openings per available worker stands at 1.13, down from 2.03 in March 2022 and below the average in 2019, before the pandemic. The rates of both hiring and quitting have been unusually low for months, and the days of outsize wage growth are well in the rearview mirror.
At the same time, few employers are laying people off, preferring to cut their hours and keep them on staff. In that sludgy job market, the average duration of unemployment for those out of work has been rising, as it has become difficult to land new positions.
Nonetheless, Karin Kimbrough, the chief economist at the professional networking and recruiting site LinkedIn, has seen applications for open positions creep up and thinks the deep freeze may thaw soon.
“After two years of slowing hiring and retrenchment by companies, where they were focused on efficiency and trying to digest all the hiring they had done previously, you cannot remain in a state of caution,” Dr. Kimbrough said. “At some point they have to emerge and say, ‘We’re going to make investments,’ and that’s hopefully going to result in a more dynamic labor market going forward.”
The post December Jobs Report Is Expected to Add Clarity After Erratic Months appeared first on New York Times.
