‘No hire’ job market leaves unemployed in limbo as threats to economy multiply

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER Associated Press Economics Writer WASHINGTON AP When Carly Kaprive left a job in Kansas City and moved to Chicago a year ago she figured it would take three to six months to find a new position After all the -year old project manager had never been unemployed for longer than three months Related Articles The FAA s order to cut flights nationwide due to the governing body shutdown is in effect Zuckerberg Chan shift bulk of philanthropy to science focusing on AI and biology to curb infection Musk could become history s first trillionaire as Tesla shareholders approve giant pay package Peloton recalls nearly exercise bikes after several seat posts break Ticker JuJu Watkins joins Boston Legacy FC investors DraftKings strikes deal with ESPN Instead after applications she s still looking wrapped up in a frustrating and extended job hunt that is much more complicated than when she last looked for work just a couple of years ago With uncertainty over interest rates tariffs immigration and artificial intelligence roiling much of the financial market specific companies she s interviewed with have abruptly decided not to fill the job at all I have definitely had mid-interview roles be eliminated entirely that they are not going to move forward with even hiring anybody she revealed Kaprive is caught in a historical anomaly The unemployment rate is low and the business sector is still growing but those out of work face the slowest pace of hiring in more than a decade Diane Swonk chief economist at KPMG calls it a jobless boom While big corporate layoff announcements typically grab the majority attention it has been the unwillingness of multiple companies to add workers that has created a more painful job territory than the low unemployment rate would suggest It is also more bifurcated The low hire low fire business sector has meant fewer layoffs for those with jobs while the unemployed struggle to find work It s like an insider-outsider thing Guy Berger head of research at the Burning Glass Institute mentioned where outsiders that need jobs are struggling to get their foot in even as insiders are insulated by what up until now is a low-layoff ecosystem Several large companies have in the past few days stated tens of thousands of job cuts in the past inadequate weeks including UPS Target and IBM though Berger reported it is too soon to tell whether they signal a turn for the worse in the financial system But a rise in job cuts would be particularly challenging with hiring already so low For now it s harder than ever to get a clear read on the job field because the governing body shutdown has cut off the U S Department of Labor s monthly employment reports The October jobs record was scheduled for release Friday but has been delayed like the September figures before it The October document may be less comprehensive when it is issued because not all the evidence may be collected Before the shutdown the Labor Department broadcasted that the hiring rate the number of people hired in a given month as a percentage of those employed fell to in August matching the lowest figure outside the pandemic since March Back then the unemployment rate was a painful as the financial system slowly recovered from the job losses from the - Great Recession That is much higher than August s A great number of of those out of work are skeptical of the current low rate Brad Mislow has been mostly unemployed for the past three years after losing a job as an advertising executive in New York City Now he is substitute teaching to make ends meet It is frustrating to hear that the unemployment rate is low the financial market is great he commented I think there are people in this commercial sector who are basically fighting every day and holding on to pieces of flotsam in the shark-filled waters or they have no idea what it s like With the cabinet closed financial markets are paying closer attention to private-sector statistics but that is also mixed On Thursday the outplacement firm Challenger Gray Christmas unnerved investors with a assessment that declared job cuts surged in October from a year ago Yet on Wednesday payroll processor ADP reported that net hiring picked up in October as businesses added jobs after two months of declines Still the gain was modest ADP s figures are based on anonymous information from the million workers at its client companies Separately Revelio Labs a workplace analytics company estimated Thursday that the business sector shed jobs in October The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimates that the unemployment rate ticked up to last month Even when the authorities was releasing input economists and leaders at the Federal Reserve weren t sure how healthy the job sphere was or where it was headed next A sharp drop in immigration and stepped-up deportations have helped keep the unemployment rate low exclusively by reducing the supply of workers The business activity doesn t need to create as countless jobs to keep the unemployment rate from rising Jerome Powell chair of the Federal Reserve has called in a curious balance because both the supply of and demand for workers has fallen Economists point to numerous reasons for the hiring slowdown but the majority share a common thread Greater uncertainty from tariffs the expected impact of artificial intelligence and now the ruling body shutdown While stake in details centers to power AI is booming elevated interest rates have kept countless other parts of the financial system weak such as manufacturing and housing The concentration of economic gains in AI has left the business activity looking better on paper than it feels to the majority Americans Swonk explained Younger Americans have borne the brunt of the hiring slowdown but countless older workers have also struggled Suzanne Elder is an operations executive with extensive experience in fitness care and two years ago the Chicago resident also exposed work fast three months after she left a job she had three offers Now she s been unemployed since April She is worried that her age is a challenge but isn t letting it hold her back I got a job at so I don t see a reason to not get a job at she stated Like various job-hunters she has been stunned by the impersonal responses from recruiters often driven by hiring program She received one email from a company that thanked her for speaking with them though she never had an interview Another company that never responded to her resume appealed her to fill out a survey about their interaction Weak hiring has meant unemployment spells are getting longer according to administration figures More than one-quarter of those out of work have been unemployed for more than six months or longer a figure that rose sharply in July and August and is up from a year ago Swonk revealed that such increases are strange outside recessions A rising number of the unemployed have also given up on their job searches according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis That also holds down the unemployment rate because people who stop looking aren t counted as unemployed But Kaprive is still sticking with it she s taken classes about Amazon s web services platform to boost her tool skills We can t be narrow-minded in what we re willing to take she revealed