{"id":145737,"date":"2025-05-31T03:06:15","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T03:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/145737\/"},"modified":"2025-05-31T03:06:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T03:06:15","slug":"wheres-the-job-market-headed-in-this-uncertain-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/145737\/","title":{"rendered":"Where’s the job market headed in this uncertain economy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The raft of economic data released over the last few days has been kind of all over the map: Jobless claims were up<\/a> and pending home sales were way down<\/a>. Personal income is strong<\/a>, consumer spending is middling and consumer inflation is moderating<\/a>. Consumer sentiment is either improving from \u201clousy\u201d<\/a> or holding steady at \u201cmeh\u201d<\/a> depending who you ask.<\/p>\n

Next week it\u2019ll be all about jobs: Job openings, labor productivity, and then the May Jobs Report all come out.<\/p>\n

April\u2019s job creation was surprisingly strong<\/a>, given all the tumult of tariffs, consumer freak-outs and market gyrations. May is expected to be more muted<\/a>, but still pretty good.<\/p>\n

Employment\u2019s stayed on a pretty even keel, said John Leer, chief economist at Morning Consult.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe job market has proven to be remarkably resilient in the face of tariffs and tariff uncertainty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Leer predicts 150,000 jobs added in May, and unemployment holding at 4.2%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe narrative out there was that policy uncertainty would lead to a pullback in investment and then a reduction in hiring. I don\u2019t believe that\u2019s the case,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Partly because consumers haven\u2019t pulled back their spending<\/a> much.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo as long companies are able to make money by employing workers, they\u2019re going to do that. And that\u2019s why workers continue to have reasonably solid levels of job security,\u201d Leer said.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s less solid now is optimism about finding a new job, said Andrew Stettner, the director of economy and jobs at The Century Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe number of people on unemployment is up as compared to last year \u2014 evidence that it is harder to find a job today, especially for young people coming out of college, we do see the job openings trailing downward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This could partly be an impact of artificial intelligence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHiring at VC-backed companies has gone down significantly,\u201d said Peter Walker, senior director of insights at equity management firm Carta.<\/p>\n

Walker said hiring at tech startups in early 2025 was only a third of the level in 2022. He doesn\u2019t think companies are replacing current workers with AI, \u201cBut a lot of them are saying: \u2018I have a team of five engineers. I don\u2019t think I need any more because every single one of those is more productive now using AI.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Add that up at startups all over the country, and Walker said eventually we\u2019ll see employment stagnate \u2014 and maybe even shrink \u2014 in the sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The raft of economic data released over the last few days has been kind of all over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3092],"tags":[51,62712,62711,3374,16484,897,62713,16,15],"class_list":["post-145737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jobs","tag-business","tag-consumer-outlook","tag-economic-data","tag-employment","tag-job-market","tag-jobs","tag-jobs-data","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114600239884866232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}