'We've got a very big problem:' Why the door is locked on employment for so many

Christy Strawser (0:01)

This is On Deadline, where the biggest stories, the smartest journalists, and the conversations that matter come together from Audacy news stations across the country.

When news breaks, the story doesn't stop there. I'm Christy Strawser, let's get started. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. And with Labor Day and the Rearview Mirror and kids back in school, it does feel like a new moment. So, how are jobs in this era? Newell Norman finds out at WWL in New Orleans.

SPEAKER_2 (0:32)

Is the post-pandemic, no-hire, no-fire economy officially coming to an end? Well, we're joined by Sean Higgins, Competitive Enterprise Institute Research fellow to talk about that. This data seems to me to be like all over the map. Folks are making predictions and they're coming in, they're higher, they're lower, the Dow drops, oil's nearing 100 I don't know how you guys keep all of this straight, to be quite honest with you.

Sean Higgins (1:00)

It's really, yeah, you're right. This is a very sort of contradictory report, and it runs contrary to a lot of what, of the other things we've seen earlier this year regarding the economy.

So it took a lot of people by surprise. But that's sort of one of the issues we're having with it, having now is just how accurate is the data that we're using. You know, there's been a lot of concern and talk about the BLS's numbers over the last year. So and they do traditionally sort of revamp these numbers. So the numbers we're talking about right now, the 162,000 that we supposedly, of jobs we supposedly had in August, maybe revisited next month and altered again. So we'll see how that goes.

SPEAKER_2 (1:39)

Well, it's interesting, you know, the Trump administration was very critical of the BLS statistics. They made some moves. The revisions typically went downward.

Since then, most of the revisions have moved upward, June and July both, right?

Sean Higgins (1:56)

That's certainly that was the case for the last month. Yeah, they looked back at the two previous months before August and added about 50, 40,000 new jobs.

SPEAKER_2 (2:07)

So what is this most recent report revealed to you? What do you find it's important in it at this point in time, understanding that a lot of these numbers may go away?

Sean Higgins (2:18)

Well, the most striking thing about it was that there was a higher than expected hiring in restaurants and bars and other sort of hospitality things, because that's generally an indicator of where the economy is. If people are outside and spending money and going out to dinner or taking vacations or that type of stuff, that's generally a good sign because it's usually one of the first things people cut back on in bad times.

And that was one of the reasons why a lot of predictions were more pessimistic earlier this summer was because there had been a lot of reports that those sectors weren't doing a lot of hiring. So that was one of the reasons. It's one of the reasons why people are now looking at this most recent report and saying, oh, well, things are actually probably doing better than we thought.

Christy Strawser (2:57)

Here's another take on the economy and jobs from Rob Hart in Chicago.

Rob Hart (3:02)

Some experts say the job market is dead and not coming back. Rick Cobb, founder of the workplace consulting firm to Discern in Chicago. Rick, thank you for joining us today on The Noon Business Hour. And I saw a sobering graph yesterday.

And that was after the latest Joltz information came out. That's the quit rate. And that the quit rate is the lowest it's been since about 10 or 15 years ago. And that was back when unemployment was at 8 or 9 percent. The low higher, low fire job market continues and it sees there's no sign of it turning around.

Rick Cobb (3:40)

No, there really isn't. It's frozen solid and you're talking about when the numbers were down there, that was during the last recession.

So we really got a problem. Your 1.6 million fewer voluntary quits now, as opposed to what it's been. And you've got 7.3 million openings, which sounds great, but the higher rate is 3.4 percent, which is nothing.

Rob Hart (4:05)

So how can you position yourself for this particular job in the market if you are looking?

Rick Cobb (4:11)

It's so difficult.

It's harder now to get in front of somebody than it's ever been. There's so many barriers up. And what's happened is it's not huge layoffs really driven by AI as much as it is college graduates coming out and not being able to find a place in the market because a lot of the jobs that you fill when you come straight into a new job are ones that are now being replaced by AI. So it's just that it's a frozen, it's a frozen situation which makes it very difficult for somebody who's actually in the market and working five or six different jobs over their lifetime to come in against that population. It's just that the door is locked.