Labor Economist at ZipRecruiter Nicole Bachaud Talks US Labor

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Tom Keene** (0:07)
Nicole Bachaud is out of control, was at Zillow, now at ZipRecruiter, in a hipster jobs report.
It's great, Nicole, thank you so much for being with us today. Buried in your note is the stress that I hear 24-7 from listeners and viewers. They think the economists are nuts. It's brutal out there, particularly for the kids. How bad is it?

**Nicole Bachaud** (0:33)
Well, you know, I think that's why it's important to kind of get into the data underneath the headlines. We heard unemployment is stable at 4.1%, jobs are being added to the economy. Overall, it seems like things are on the up and up in the labor market, but we're still seeing long-term unemployment rising. So people who have been in an unemployed position for six-plus months are finding a really hard time getting back into employment where employers are kind of skimming the top of the unemployment pool to pull people who are fresher in the job search. We're seeing a lot of challenge for entry-level workers as well with the changes that AI is really instituting across a lot of different industries, taking away some entry-level tasks from workers and raising the bar for what entry-level workers are expected to do once they are hired.

**Paul Sweeney** (1:21)
Well, I think since we're talking about my son getting a job when he graduates, let's talk about youth unemployment here in the US, shall we? I mean, Nicole, what are your thoughts? I mean, how difficult is it really for some of these young recent graduates to start a career?

**Nicole Bachaud** (1:35)
We're seeing youth unemployment, particularly in the BLS data, we saw teen unemployment picking back up to over 14 percent again this month. And that really shows that it's really challenging to get an entry-level job. We're seeing these new career entrants who are competing with established, experienced workers for some of these entry-level opportunities, as a lot of folks are having a difficult time finding employment that meets their expertise level.
And so we're seeing a lot of that challenge for these younger folks as well.

**Tom Keene** (2:06)
Let me ask the dad question.
How many of these kids are having trouble finding jobs? By kids, I mean 23 to 33, because they studied the wrong courses in school. They don't have a match of their academics to the job economy.

**Nicole Bachaud** (2:25)
This is something that I think is really unique to what's happening with AI in the market right now. Jobs are changing rapidly, much faster than education is able to keep up with. Somebody who set their major four years ago and is now graduating, might find that job opportunities are more scarce in the field that they picked to go into.
But what we're also seeing is with these new tools and resources entering the market, education in a specific field doesn't necessarily have as much pull as it used to. There are a lot of ways to upskill, to transfer skills between different fields and industries, and to take advantage of what you do know and how you do know how to work and put that into a different type of position. There's a lot more kind of switching between occupations and industries happening now than we've seen in the past.

**Paul Sweeney** (3:11)
Do you believe the value of a university degree has gone down? I mean, let's just be clear here. I mean, what you're saying here is it's very difficult for kids to find jobs regardless of really which college. I mean, I'm sure there's some universities, but just talk to us through that. I mean, I've heard about a lot of students who are just skipping college altogether. I mean, close your ears, earmuffs here. But yeah, I mean, is that something you're seeing as well in the data?

**Nicole Bachaud** (3:32)
Well, we're still seeing that college degrees have a lot of value. Workers with a college degree have much lower unemployment rates across the board than those without college degrees. So there still is an inherent value in having education, but it's less of a signal on its own to employers. Really, where we're seeing employers' focus is, show me your work experience. How can you take that degree and show me what you can actually do with it? So something like putting volunteer activities on a resume, your teaching assistant work on your resume, things that actually show that you can do the work, not just that you have the knowledge, that you actually have the skills.

**Tom Keene** (4:05)
One final question, Nicole. Love having you on. Let me ask this. Are kids looking for a different kind of job than when Amy and I were looking up at the ceiling going, oh my god, what am I going to do?