News

The US labor market entered a new gear in the second half of 2024.

Low-hire, low-fire.

"We are in a 'low-hire, low-fire' environment," Bank of America's lead economist Aditya Bhave said in a note on Tuesday.

"In the spring of 2022, there were two open jobs for every unemployed person. Now that figure is just a little more than one. In other words, there aren’t as many opportunities out there."

Job openings for the month of September fell to their lowest level since January 2021, while the quits rate, a sign of confidence among workers, also dropped to 1.9% from a revised 2% in August. The number of open jobs per unemployed worker stood at 1.09.

"The low level of quits is consistent with a decline in the availability of employment opportunities," Oxford Economics lead US economist Nancy Vanden Houten said at the time.

New data released by the Department of Labor on Wednesday showed that initial filings for unemployment insurance hit a seven-month low in the week ending Nov. 23, with 213,000 initial claims filed. That's down from the 215,000 the week prior and below the 215,000 economists had expected.

But the number of people making continuing claims, or those filing for unemployment benefits for at least two straight weeks, rose to 1.907 million last week, the highest level since November 2021.

Samuel Tombs, chief US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote Wednesday, "The recent pick-up in continuing claims broadly supports the idea that the flow of initial claims still is high enough for unemployment to continue to rise."

The unemployment rate in October stood at 4.1%, down from this summer's high of 4.3% but up from 3.8% a year ago.

Job growth has not only slowed overall but recent hiring trends have been concentrated in just a handful of sectors. Bank of America pointed out that three sectors — healthcare and education, leisure and hospitality, and government — have driven hiring patterns over the last six quarters. Over the last three months, nonfarm payroll growth has slowed to just 104,000 on average.

"Other industries have basically been stagnant for the last few months," the team wrote.

Despite the rise in the unemployment rate, Bhave and team noted that overall layoffs have remained low, writing that "while the labor market has moderated, it hasn't rolled over."

"A spike in layoffs would create a negative feedback loop between consumption and the labor market," Bank of America's Bhave said. "For now though, the layoff rate is below pre-pandemic levels, consistent with the low level of unemployment insurance claims."