Announcer:
4 Your Money is brought to you by NelsonCorp Wealth Management.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
It’s now time for 4 Your Money. We’re joined by John Nelson, financial planner at NelsonCorp Wealth Management. Welcome back, John.
John Nelson:
Thank you for having me, Brandy.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
So the monthly jobs report comes out this Friday and there have been a lot of mixed signals about the job market lately. What are you seeing?
John Nelson:
Yeah, so current job market, we would call in that low hire, low fire type mode. And what we mean by that is the chart will help illustrate that we’re seeing companies today pretty stagnant. So the top line is the hiring rate in blue and that’s the share of workers hired each month, and the bottom line is layoffs going back to 2001. What we can see is if we look at the layoffs first in red, it’s sitting right at about 1%, which is right at the lowest level in 25 years. Employers are holding onto their people. At the same time, we’re seeing hiring rates drift down to 3.2-ish percent where it’s been pre-pandemic type numbers. So companies are not cutting jobs, but they’re also not adding many jobs either. And that’s why we can have months like August where the economy added 162,000 jobs, but we’re still sitting at 4.1% unemployment. So the weekly unemployment numbers are similar, Brandy. They’re historically low and matching up similar to this data.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
Okay. So what does that mean for people at home? Is this good news or bad news?
John Nelson:
Yeah, so I think it depends what side you’re on. If you have a job, you’re currently looking at a job market at 25-year lows. If you’re looking for work, that can be a different story and a bit more difficult. For the markets and the economy, it’s a pretty stable signal where we’re not seeing much fluctuation. Recessions usually come with higher layoffs and unemployment. We’re not there yet.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
All right, John. As always, thanks for joining us.
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