A Now Hiring sign is seen inside a WholeFoods store in New York City.
Adam Jeffery | ស្ថានីយទូរទស្សន៍ CNBC
Recession-like conditions rolling through the U.S. economy are likely to cause more ripples through an otherwise strong jobs market.
“Rolling recessions” has become a popular term these days for what the U.S. has faced since a slowdown that started in early 2022. The term connotes that while the economy may not meet an official recession definition, there will be sectors that will feel very much like they are in contraction.
That will be true as well for the jobs market, which overall has been strong but has seen weakness in sectors that could intensify this year, according to data from popular networking site LinkedIn.
Economists there, in fact, have identified multiple sectors that will show varying degrees of tightness this year.
“Labor markets remain tighter compared to pre-pandemic levels,” said Rand Ghayad, head of economics and global labor markets at LinkedIn. “They’re still resilient. They’re still stronger than what we’ve seen in the pre-pandemic period, but they’ve been slowing down gradually and will likely continue to slow down over the next few months.”
Various dominoes already have fallen during the rolling-recession period.
Housing entered a sharp downturn last year, and the widely followed manufacturing indexes have been pointing to contraction for several months. In addition, the most recent senior loan officer survey from the Federal Reserve noted significantly tighter credit conditions, indicating a slowdown is hitting the financial sector.
Other sectors could follow as economists broadly expect that the U.S. will see — at best — slow to moderate growth this year.
LinkedIn data, which comes from job postings and other data from the site’s more than 900 million members worldwide, is markedly different from government data in an interesting way.
Whereas the more widely following data from Bureau of Labor Statistics finds an extremely tight labor market, with nearly two open jobs for every available worker, LinkedIn’s “labor market tightness” metric has shown about a 1-to-1 ratio that even looks to be loosening a bit more.
The implications are important.
The Federal Reserve has cited the historic tightness of the labor market as motivation for its ស៊េរីនៃការដំឡើងអត្រាការប្រាក់ aimed at taming inflation. If the market trends are unfolding the way LinkedIn data indicates, it could provide impetus for the central bank to ease up on its own tightening measures.
“Everything depends on what the Fed will be doing over the next couple of months,” Ghayad said.
Where the jobs will be
Recession fears loom
A ការស្ទង់មតិវិបត្តិសេដ្ឋកិច្ច from The Wall Street Journal sees about a 61% chance of a contraction, and the New York Fed’s recession indicator, which tracks the spread between 10-year and 3-month Treasury yields as an indicator, is pointing toward a 57% chance of a recession in the next year. That’s the highest level since 1982.
Still, Ghayad said he expects hiring to remain strong, even though LinkedIn posts mentioning words such as “layoffs,” “recession” and “open to work” have been on the rise in recent months.
“We don’t expect sort of any potential downturn to significantly impact the labor markets,” he said. “We’re in a very good position right now. There’s some cooling, but … the labor market continues to be the brightest spot in the U.S. economy.”
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/12/heres-where-the-jobs-will-be-during-the-rolling-recessions.html