Headlines have been buzzing about media and tech layoffs to start 2024 (Quartz is guilty as charged). But those job cuts aren’t reflective of the overall labor market — or the economy.
Government data has consistently showed robust job growth, and the workforce as a whole is “doing quite well,” said Arthur Wheaton, a labor expert at Cornell University. The numbers agree with him. While job cuts increased in from December to January, they were still down 20% compared to last year. And unemployment has remained below 4% for the longest stretch of time since the 1960s, Wheaton noted.
Nick Bunker, the chief economist at Indeed, said that, “If you look at the total state of play when it comes to demand for workers, things are still strong, things are still healthy, even if there are some sectors like tech that are going through a period of recalibration and, unfortunately, some notable layoffs.”
The nuance to the numbers
Layoffs are plaguing the tech sector, and the biggest names — Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon — announced cuts early this year. U.S. tech companies shed almost 16,000 workers in January alone, up more than 250% from the prior month.
But those reductions aren’t nearly as bad as the year before, when tech companies eliminated more than 40,000 jobs in one month. And while finance and media layoffs increased in January, the retail sector saw fewer layoffs than the year before. Administrative roles have been cut from the healthcare sector, but employers are still heavily recruiting workers for patient-facing jobs.
“The economy is never 100% all across the board,” Wheaton said.
And Bunker told Quartz that job postings in most industries on Indeed — one of the biggest job application and company recruitment websites in the U.S. — are still above their pre-pandemic levels. Specifically, only eight of 47 sectors tracked by Indeed currently have fewer job openings than they did before February 2020.
Job postings for physicians and surgeons, pharmacists, civil engineers and therapists are all well ahead of where they were before the pandemic. Remote-friendly job postings are down, but listings requiring in-person work were up about 30%.
“Things are still in expansion mode, not really a reduction mode,” Bunker said.
In fact, there’s actually a labor shortage, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business lobbying group. Even if all unemployed Americans found jobs, there would still be 3 million unfilled positions. The Chamber of Commerce says the labor force is experiencing what it calls “The Great Reshuffling.”
The U.S. job market, by the numbers
💼 9.5 million: Job openings in the U.S.
👎 6.5 million: Unemployed Americans
📉 20%: How much layoffs fell from January 2023 to January 2024
🏃🏽♂️ 353,000: Jobs added to the U.S. economy in January
🥼 102%: How much job postings increased for physicians and surgeons from February 2020 to now
👷♀️ 3.7%: Current unemployment rate