Maskot | Digitalvision | Getty Photos
The Glassdoor Worker Confidence Index in January fell to its lowest degree since 2016, when the profession web site started monitoring the metric, it mentioned Monday. The index measures how employees really feel about their employer’s six-month enterprise outlook.
The decline suggests job safety is a “distinguished” fear, mentioned Daniel Zhao, lead economist at Glassdoor.
“It’s a sign that staff are involved heading into 2024,” he mentioned.
Layoff headlines masks ‘very strong’ job market
That deterioration is probably going as a consequence of a wave of layoff bulletins in current weeks, Zhao mentioned.
To this point in 2024, for instance, huge know-how corporations together with Amazon, eBay, Google and Microsoft have introduced job cuts. However it’s not simply tech. Others like BlackRock, Citigroup and Common Music Group additionally introduced layoffs.
U.S.-based firms deliberate about 722,000 job cuts in 2023, nearly double these introduced in 2022, in line with Challenger, Grey & Christmas, an outplacement and government teaching agency.
Nevertheless, these current headlines masks power within the general job market, economists mentioned.
From a employee’s perspective, issues “don’t get any higher,” mentioned Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
Regardless of pockets of layoffs in sure industries like tech, Zandi mentioned, job cuts throughout the broad U.S. labor market proceed to hover close to historic lows, the place they’ve been since spring 2021.
New claims for unemployment insurance coverage are in step with their pre-pandemic development in 2019, which economists describe as a interval of labor-market power. The unemployment charge has additionally been under 4% for 2 years.
Certainly, in relation to the typical annual unemployment charge, 2023 was the sixth-best yr on file (rating solely behind a number of years within the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties), mentioned Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
“It’s nonetheless a really strong and resilient labor market general,” Pollak mentioned.
Outlook depends upon your reference level
Whereas the Glassdoor index reveals deteriorating confidence, different measures sign a rosier view concerning the job market and U.S. financial system.
For instance, client sentiment jumped 13% in January to its highest degree since July 2021, in line with the College of Michigan. Equally, a Convention Board ballot additionally discovered that client optimism strengthened in December, throughout all ages and family revenue ranges.
Housing values and inventory costs are at file highs and, in relative phrases, “everybody’s obtained a job,” Zandi mentioned.
Extra from Private Finance:
Why employees’ raises are smaller in 2024
Staff are paying to get a part of their paychecks early
The ‘haves and have nots’ of the job market
ZipRecruiter’s Job Seeker Confidence Index additionally rose within the final two quarters of 2023, although it stays under early 2022.
Total employee sentiment seemingly depends upon their reference level, Pollak mentioned.
For instance, if employees are evaluating outcomes relative to what was anticipated to occur in 2023 — a yr by which many economists had anticipated the U.S. to tip into recession — then the current job market appears like “a miracle,” Pollak mentioned.
Nevertheless, employees are extra apt to check their present outlook to that of a yr or two in the past — a time when the job market was purple scorching and employees had file leverage to get higher jobs and better pay. Since then, “issues have undoubtedly cooled and slowed,” Pollak mentioned.
The one ‘blemish’ within the U.S. financial system
The Federal Reserve raised borrowing prices aggressively to chill the financial system and labor market, to finally tame persistently excessive inflation.
The inflation charge has decreased considerably from its pandemic-era peak. However the inflationary episode has left client prices noticeably costlier, particularly for staples like meals and lease, economists mentioned.
“The one [economic] blemish — and it’s an enormous blemish — is costs are a lot increased than they had been two to a few years in the past,” Zandi mentioned.
Excessive pandemic-era inflation eroded shopping for energy for the typical particular person in consecutive months for greater than two years. Whereas wage progress was traditionally excessive, employees’ paychecks purchased much less.
However that development has reversed: Wage progress now surpasses the speed of inflation for the typical particular person, which means employees’ paychecks are rising once more relative to the issues they purchase. If that development holds, client confidence ought to regularly rebound, Zandi mentioned.
