You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. We will get our weekly read on the US labor market come Thursday with initial jobless claims, which have been trending higher, signaling cooler conditions in the US labor market. Although perspective here, folks still low by historical standards, and we need to surpass three hundred thousand to raise a red flag. So, Katie,
the type labor market continues to really present struggles. We know this for many employers, absolutely, Uh. Struggles for employers, struggles for the feed as well. Jerome Pal himself has said that basically the rate of unemployment right now, it's unsustainable. All right, So let's talk about, UM, how tight this labor force is and how it is tricky for some employers. Julia Pollock is back with us. She's chief economists and ZIP recruiter UH, and she is with us on the
phone from Los Angeles. Julia, nice to have you back with us. UM big picture. First of all, when it comes to the labor market, we recently had unbelievably strong monthly jobs report, a blockbuster. How are you seeing it from a macro big perspective. This is a very very strange moment in the labor market where you do see these enormous games and they're very very broad, broad broad games. Uh. And at the same time you see signs of an
extremely tight label market. As you're saying, not just the record low um uh job was claimed and even though they're taking up slightly, but they're not feeding into continuing claims. We're seeing no pass throught. So people are not staying unemployment very long. They've being snapped up right away after they get laid off from their tech company and they're
getting hired um so. So yes, unemployment is still coming down, and yet companies seem quite worried about the hossibility of the future downturn and they are hardening themselves against that possibility. And if you look at their future hiring plans, they do look a little bit more um concerned, and they hope that things will be able to turn back to normal and that they will be able to stop doing this a crazy amount of hiring that they're doing. So, Julia,
employers worried about a future downturn? What about job seekers right now? So job seecret confidence is still holding remarkably steady. You know, if you look at all the different confidence surveys, CEO confidence has plummeted, home buyer confidence has plummeted, consumer confidence is very low. But job seecre confidence has been amazingly strong since the omicron surge passed. And and that's because job seekers have offers in their back pockets. They
are holding out for better. Uh, they are convinced that if they resign from their current jobs, the current employers will asked them to stay and give them a raise um and and counter an outside offers. So they have an enormous amount of bargaining power and leverage. That said, they they're reading the news, they see all these headlines
about layoffs, and so they are concerned as well. And in the last two months, our future expectations have kind of taken a those dive, and they're starting to worry that jobs may not be splentiful in the future. That's interesting too, because the okay, yeah, so you're talking about sentiments specifically, which is certainly something we know the FED watches keeps a watch on pretty closely in terms of
what it might mean for future activity. So what's your net net takeaway I'm thinking about and I day in and day out, we're talking about the big macro issues that are facing investors. You know, recession and recession. Labor markets still strong, how long does it continue? Consumers you know, spending how long will they continue? UM job market, So what's the takeaway, the big picture takeaway that that you
would tell our audience right now and the implications of it. Yeah, yeah, So inside most companies, uh there, this is still an incredibly tight light market and hiring is still hugely challenging. Most companies are still seeing about twenty three percent more employees quick each month and they did in twenty nineteen. And most companies are still doing about twelve percent more hiring each month than they did in twenty nineteen, just to kind of tread water because it's so much turn
and so so many quick. I think it's understandable that companies are kind of nostalgic for the good old days when everything was slower, when there was less turnover in turn, when it wasn't so difficult to hire um, when they could still insist on on basic skind of standards, and you know that they could have a rule that one strike rule and you're out if you missed work without notice. H that's more like a ten strike rule and you're out.
Uh rule now because companies cannot afford to lay people off because they know that they can't replace them well. And people would argue on the other side that right, workers are finally kind of getting their day after years and years of pressure and wages staying down and even on an inflationary you know, basis, um, wages are not
necessarily keeping up with inflation in a lot of different industries. UM. But I do wonder, then, is another net takeaway as we spend so much time talking about the macro issue of inflation, which is certainly front and center and probably the number one thing on the Fed's mind. Not probably, it is so still tight labor market versus what we're seeing in t Does that mean wage pressures are sticking
around longer? Yes, that is exactly I think the takeaway from this most recent jobs report that perhaps the risk of a recession who has gone down a little bit, but the risk of persistent inflation is still very much there. And and that is the big question. You know, how much cold water will the said have to throw on this economy. It looks as though, for you, for now, the labor market is pretty resilient and it's able to withstand neutral interest rates. But could it withstand much higher
interest rates? That's the big question, and I think that's why you see some sort of cautious optimism on spend some parts of the market, and even some um some sort of gloom and doom in others, like in those manufacturing numbers that came up to be all right. Gonna leave it on that note, Tilia, Thank you. Julia Pollock, chief economists and ZIP recruiter joining us on the phone from Los Angeles. Any thoughts there. I just that last point you made that it feels like workers are finally
having their day. I just hope that remains. Obviously that's a huge product of the labor shortage, but I hope that momentum sticks around. Right, we were finally starting to see especially at the lower end um I want to say, pre pandemic, and then you know, there were certainly pressures there