Heres the truth about what's actually going on in the jobs market

Caroline Woods: Yeah we're going to do the check in on the jobs market. And I have to say the headlines have been dire. I was taking a look at some worst time to be a college graduate in years. College grads face worse jobs, market in a decade. Private sector loses jobs in September. What's going on with the jobs market. Is it as bad as the headlines seem?

Nicole Bachaud: So we've seen a lot of slow movement in the jobs market over the past several months. Employers and workers are both feeling stuck in place due to economic uncertainty and rising issues that are impacting beyond the labor market. We're seeing workers who are job hugging, sticking tightly to positions that they might have otherwise vacated. At the same time that we're seeing employers pulling back on hiring, slowing down growth in order to cut costs as they're seeing tariffs eat into their bottom lines more and more, and trying to figure out how the changes to all of these different policies and macroeconomic conditions are going to continue to impact their business moving forward. So we're seeing that slowing down. A lot of the movement in the labor market. We're coming off of that pandemic peak post pandemic peak in 2022. So this feels like a really, really slow labor market in comparison to a really hot kind of frenzied time. So the stark back and forth has been why I think we're seeing a lot of people feeling a more dire than maybe even some of the numbers could suggest otherwise.

Caroline Woods: So is it just that it's harder, maybe, to find a job right now. But it's not necessarily that a lot of people are losing their jobs right now?

Nicole Bachaud: Yeah we're seeing this shift between, you know, no, we're not seeing a lot of layoffs. We're seeing layoffs and terminations remaining historically low. We're seeing the quits rate also remaining historically low. So we're not seeing a lot of people vacating those positions. But at the same time, we're seeing unemployment, which, while low, has been starting to pick up a little bit. We currently have more unemployed people than there are job openings for them to jump into.

Caroline Woods: Yeah, it's interesting you talk about job hugging, which I can assume what that means. But if job hopping is lower and tenure is increasing, do you think that's a temporary shift or something that could be more permanent?

Nicole Bachaud: From the data that we're seeing internally from ZipRecruiter surveys and our marketplace platform, we're seeing that the response to job hugging and staying in place for a lot of workers is really driven by macroeconomic uncertainty. A stable paycheck is better than the risk of going and looking for a different opportunity. So we're seeing the current conditions really driving a lot of that change. But businesses are seeming to embrace the stability and the loyalty from their workforce. We're seeing the focus on institutional knowledge and other factors of keeping your workplace stable that are benefiting businesses as they're looking to reduce those costs, reduce hiring costs and keep things a little bit more flatlined for the time being.

Caroline Woods: You mentioned your survey. You just did a new hire survey. So some people out there, if their new hires have been able to find jobs, and I have to say, I was taking a look at some of the takeaways and they were pretty surprising to me. Searches are speeding up, response times are improving. The need to mass apply is on the way out. So that all sounds good?

Nicole Bachaud: So what we're seeing right now is in response to a lot of the uncertainty in the market, job seekers and who are becoming new hires are really focusing in on the types of jobs that they can see themselves in long term, and that are more matched to their current qualifications. While we saw the smaller share of new hires getting into their dream job, we're seeing more people actually satisfied with the jobs they're getting into, focusing on things like flexibility, culture fit, and other aspects beyond pay and beyond that are more important for finding stability and longevity in their position that they're jumping into.

Caroline Woods: Well, on that note, I did see that women are far more likely to it focuses much on pay. They're more likely to focus on things like culture and flexibility. Yeah what could that mean for the gender pay gap?

Nicole Bachaud: So we just received data. The census just put out their updated pay outlook from 2024 data. And we're seeing the gender pay gap is actually increasing getting worse for the second year in a row. And we haven't seen a consecutive widening of this gap in several decades. And some of this is going to be looking at the ways that women and men are approaching the labor market differently right now. From our new hire survey at ZipRecruiter, we are seeing, as you mentioned, that there is a higher incidence of women taking lower paying roles or taking a pay cut from their previous position in favor of culture fit and flexibility and having more work life balance. Those things are becoming more important for workers, particularly for women. And so we're seeing that gap starting to diverge a little bit more than we would like to see it right now.

Caroline Woods: Yeah how concerning is that I mean there are trade offs, right? Pay doesn't matter. No matter if you don't have any, you know, work life balance. But it seems like that could be pretty concerning.

Nicole Bachaud: It definitely could be when we're looking at the other responses in our surveys, what we're seeing is that the stability and job security for women who are focusing on these other more holistic aspects of the job search, they're feeling much more stable in their jobs than men who are focusing more on compensation and benefits and those higher pay positions. So there is a trade off between going after a bigger paycheck and going after something that's going to give you a little bit more longevity in that position. So this is kind of an interesting dilemma. And I think businesses really have a space to respond to this right now. Creating more flexible workspaces, creating more flexible scheduling opportunities is going to be a way that women are going to be able to find more of what they're looking for across different industries, across different workplaces, and be able to get into those higher paying positions as they see those opportunities kind of expanding to those positions as well.

Caroline Woods: OK, so we focused a lot on people looking for jobs. What about the people who are actually in their jobs right now. On a scale of 1 to 10, how concerned should they be about their positions?

Nicole Bachaud: So we are not seeing a big increase in layoffs. Layoffs and terminations have remained very low, historically low compared to pre-pandemic levels. So we're not seeing a lot of businesses kind of letting go of positions. We're seeing the reduction in who's coming in to hire. What we're seeing from our upcoming employer survey that we're going to be putting out in the next couple of weeks. Early signs are pointing to businesses looking to increase hiring over the next couple of months into the next year. And that's a really good sign for workers who are kind of rethinking their position, who are looking to up their benefits, up their pay, get into some new experiences. There will be opportunities that unravel as businesses kind of find their footing and figure out what the next step for them is going to be moving forward. And so workers can prepare themselves for that right now, to be ready to make those jumps when those opportunities become available.

Caroline Woods: OK and as we're seeing this slowdown in the labor market. How much worse could it get before it gets better?

Nicole Bachaud: So there there are opportunities for things to get better right now. The Fed cutting the interest rates is going to be one thing that could spur more business opportunity and business hiring in the next coming months. Tariffs are going to be the biggest headwind for that. We're seeing high tariff prices that are cutting into business bottom lines, as businesses are absorbing those costs internally rather than passing them on to the consumer at this point. So we're seeing tariffs be one of the major sticking points for how we're going to see this play out in the future. If inflation continues to increase, we'll likely see the Fed pulling back. As many cuts coming forward depending on what the data is going to show us in the next couple of months. And so that's really what's going to be dependent on the direction that we move and how quickly we get to that point where businesses will be able to hire again.