Dan Hevere has been fired before, but this time felt different.
Hevia, 42, is a marketing and business development specialist based in the New York City area who has been unemployed since the summer. In a recent LinkedIn post, he claimed to have filled out more than 1,000 job applications but had nothing to show for it.
“If you had told me when I was laid off in June that I would be without a job offer for almost 6 months, I would have laughed (Long live confidence!),” Hevia wrote. “But now that you’re here, this job market humbles you on a regular basis.”
In an interview with NBC News, Hevia said he has little hope for what the future holds for his career.
“I continue to apply, feeling shaken in confidence, if not completely devastated,” he said.
For many workers, the euphoria of the “grand resignation” that brought massive job turnover and significant wage increases after COVID-19 restarts has been replaced by a new environment that is far more uncertain. Replaced.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said this week that even though layoffs remain contained and job openings rose in October, the employment rate has fallen to levels not seen since the U.S. was emerging from the financial crisis of the late 2000s. reported that it did.
The unemployment rate remains at a historically low level of 4.2%. (Context: In the 1970s and 1980s, the unemployment rate never fell below 5%.)
But while the unemployment rate has fallen slightly in recent months, it is still significantly higher than its pandemic-era low of 3.4% in April 2023.
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its November employment report. The number of additional jobs exceeded expectations at 227,000.
However, the unemployment rate rose to 4.2% and the median length of unemployment was 10.5 weeks, the highest level since May 2017.
“Labor demand is slowing,” Seema Shah, chief global strategist at financial group Principal Asset Management, wrote in a note after Friday’s announcement, adding that expectations for a rise in the unemployment rate and last month’s jobs report Both noted below corrections. Impact of strikes and hurricanes.
“There are cracks in the labor market,” she added.
Guy Berger, chief economist at the Burning Glass Institute, a labor market research group, said in a recent interview that people who currently have jobs are unlikely to lose their jobs.
But there has rarely been a worse time in recent history to look for them.
“I accept the argument that the job market is good,” Berger said in a recent interview. But it’s not great, he added.
“Employment is too low. It’s really hard to find a job,” he continued. “It’s good to have a lot of people employed, but it’s not clear that we’re on a good trajectory.”
Part of the problem appears to be a dramatic shift in the labor market that favors employers. A Gallup poll released Tuesday found that U.S. workers are seeking new opportunities at the highest rate since 2015, as overall satisfaction with their current employer has returned to an all-time low. . .
In a summary of their research, Gallup analysts called this period a “big break” and said widespread disruptive organizational change in the wake of the pandemic has led to worker burnout.
There are two important observations from the study.
Fewer than half of the employees Gallup surveyed said they knew what was expected of them at work, and they felt their work was important based on the company’s mission and purpose. Only 30% “strongly agreed” with what they felt.
Both of these findings were record lows for this study.
Meanwhile, many business owners are grappling with budget cuts, staff changes and new responsibilities, Gallup said.
“Across the U.S. workforce, people are increasingly disconnected from their employers on key metrics,” Ben Wigert, director of research and strategy at Gallup, one of the survey analysts, said in an interview. .
Wiegert said Gallup’s workplace metrics are about the same as they were in 2015. But the context is different.
“The current job market has cooled considerably since the resignations, and with inflation, people don’t feel comfortable making the leap into new roles,” Wigert said. “So they’re stuck with this frustration. It’s a completely different situation.”
Voters consistently rank the U.S. economy as their top concern heading into November’s presidential election. But neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump offered an economic vision that emphasized abundant job growth. Ultimately, voters wanted a return to the economic environment that prevailed during President Trump’s first term and blamed the Biden-Harris administration for creating an uncertain economic environment.
Many voters believe the economy is likely to improve with Trump’s return to the Oval Office amid promises of deregulation, but it’s unclear how much the labor market will improve from here. isn’t it. In their 2025 economic outlook, economists at Wells Fargo say the unemployment rate is likely to remain at current levels while job growth slows.
“While the (pandemic) “catch-up” hiring in industries that have disproportionately boosted salary growth over the past year (e.g., healthcare, government, leisure and hospitality) is complete, economic growth has generally been slower due to tariffs. Slower, but still “repressive monetary policy and slower growth in the number of workers are all likely to contribute to a slower pace of job growth,” the economists wrote.
Essentially, employment is likely to remain depressed for some time due to a slowing job market and economic conditions that are too tough for comfort.
Not all economists agree that the U.S. labor market is experiencing extraordinary tensions, and the frictions that do exist sometimes have easily identifiable causes. In a note last month examining the state of the U.S. economy, Goldman Sachs analysts said a surge in immigration over the past two years has caused unemployment to rise.
As border insecurity sharply declines, job opportunities should begin to ease in many sectors, they said.
“The number of openings is high and layoffs are low,” the analysts wrote. “Although we have yet to find conclusive evidence of labor market stabilization, now that immigration is slowing, employment growth trends will stabilize and become strong enough to eventually reduce unemployment. It seems like you have a certain
Capital Economics Research Group analyst Thomas Ryan said in a separate note released Wednesday that recent BLS data suggests the labor market has “found a bottom” while companies “remain slow in hiring and firing.” ”, indicating that it is “stable at a healthy level.” ”
But analysts at Vanguard say the hiring boom that occurred during the pandemic’s restart may not happen anytime soon.
“Large employers are becoming more cautious about hiring new workers,” they wrote in a recent report. “Furthermore, hiring activity for low-income jobs continues to normalize from the highs of the pandemic recovery period.”
Thanks in part to advances in artificial intelligence, labor productivity is expected to continue improving in 2025, but as a result, layoffs are likely to decline. “Company new hiring rates are likely to remain at current modest levels,” Vanguard analysts said.
For workers like Hevia, that could mean a job-hunting uncertainty with no end in sight. For now, he continues to apply and look for consulting jobs, but his expectations for senior-level positions and salaries have waned.
“At this point, anything is better than nothing,” he said.
