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A gradual cooling of the labor market has made it tougher to find a new job, but overall conditions are still favorable for job seekers.
“Things have gotten competitive,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
“Don’t get discouraged; there are opportunities out there,” she added. “This is still a strong labor market.”
Signs of a cooling labor market
National job openings in April fell to their lowest level in more than three years, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.
April’s ratio is back to its pre-pandemic level, Jason Furman, an economics professor at Harvard University and former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, wrote on X.
The hiring rate has also gradually fallen to below its pre-pandemic level, as has the quits rate, a gauge of workers’ sentiment about their job prospects, according to BLS data. Both were unchanged in April, though.
“The reduction in quits [and] hires alike likely explains why some feel the job market is sluggish [and] especially tough for new/returning workers,” Daniel Zhao, lead economist on Glassdoor’s economic research team, wrote on X.
Overall, labor data points to a “trajectory of modest cooling,” Zhao said.
But there’s strength, too
The job market has slackened from red-hot levels in 2021 and 2022, when metrics like job openings and turnover hit unprecedented heights, a period that came to be known as the “great resignation.”