Job seekers are sour on the cooling labor market

cnbc.com:

Workers are souring on the state of the job market.

Job seeker confidence in Q2 2024 fell to its lowest level in more than two years, according to a quarterly survey by ZipRecruiter, which has tracked the metric since Q1 2022. Thatdecline suggests workers are more pessimistic about their ability to land their preferred jobs.

Workers had reason for euphoria two to three years ago: The job market was red-hot and, by many metrics, historically strong.

It has remained remarkably resilient even in the face of an aggressive interest-rate-hiking campaign by U.S. Federal Reserve to tame high inflation.

However, the labor market has slowed gradually. Workers are now having a harder time finding jobs and the labor market, while still solid, could be in trouble if it continues to cool, economists said.

«There actually now is reason in the data to understand why job seekers are feeling kind of gloomy,» said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. «The labor market really is deteriorating and jobseekers are noticing.»

Demand for workers surged in 2021 as Covid-19 vaccines rolled out and the U.S. economy reopened broadly.

Job openings hit record highs, giving workers ample choice. Businesses competed for talent by raising wages quickly. By January 2023, the unemployment rate touched 3.4%, its lowest level since 1969.

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Workers were able to quit their jobs readily for better, higher-paying ones, a period that came to be known as the great resignation or the great reshuffling. More than 50 million people quit in 2022, a record high.

The U.S. economy was able to