Torrent of job offers, bigger salaries offer more proof U.S. labor market is still red-hot

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More workers expect job offers, higher salaries, NY Fed poll shows

 

 

Just because the U.S. economy has slowed doesn’t mean companies have stopped hiring or people have given up looking for work. Far from it.

 

Americans still think plenty of jobs are available and companies are offering better pay as they compete for a shrinking pool of available labor, new study by the New York Federal Reserve shows.

 

The Fed study is the latest proof the jobs market continues to sizzle. The rate of layoffs each week — known as jobless claims — fell below 200,000 earlier this month for the first time since 1969. The economy also added almost 200,000 new jobs in March after a feeble 33,000 gain in February, keeping the unemployment rate at 3.8%.

  

The New York Fed has regularly questioned 1,000 people nationally over a one-year period — both those with and without jobs — to get a sense of their employment status and search for work. Some new participants are added each month and others rotated out.

 

A little over 24% said they had looked for a job in March, up from 22.6% last fall.

 

One-quarter of the respondents (25.7%) said they expected to receive at least one job offer in the next four months — the highest level since the survey began in 2014.

 

“The increase was most pronounced for respondents without a college degree,” the Fed said.

Adding to the evidence of strong demand for labor, the average full-time salary offer jumped 14% to $66,415 in March from $58,035 last November.

 

The increase should be viewed with some caution since it’s a particularly up-and-down number, but it is the highest number the regional Fed bank has recorded.

 

The upshot: The U.S. labor market hasn’t cooled off much, if at all. Companies are still willing to hire and don’t want to get caught short-handed if sales pick up in the spring as many economists predict.

 

Another side-effect of the strong labor market is a steadily increasing stock prices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.01% and S&P 500 SPX, -0.23%are closing in again on record highs — just several months after a huge beatdown in December.

 

“President Obama used to stir Americans with his powerful calls for national unity. It looks like he has, after all these years, finally forged agreement among leaders in both parties that his health care law made things worse and should be replaced. Bipartisanship blooms in Washington,” Scott Jennings writes in the Courier-Journal. “Voters in both parties know they were duped by Obama’s health care promises. Private insurance customers saw their premiums and deductibles jump to pay for someone else’s health care, but not their own.”

 

“How’s this for unexpected irony: As New York pols move to choke their own economy by nixing new natural-gas supplies, President Trump is racing to the rescue,” the New York Post editorial board writes. “Trump last week signed two executive orders to help ease the way for new oil and gas pipelines and other energy projects. One, seemingly aimed squarely at New York, requires the Environmental Protection Agency to look for ways to make it harder for states to use the Clean Water Act to block pipelines”—a common tactic of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), the editors add.

 

“An Arizona mayor on Tuesday declared an emergency in the city he represents due to what he said was the strain caused by the incoming flow of migrants,” Elizabeth Zwirz reports for Fox News. “Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls shared the news on Facebook, explaining that he ‘proclaimed a local emergency’ in the city ‘due to the migrant family releases overwhelming the local shelter system.’”

 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/westwingreads/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/lots-of-job-offers-bigger-salary-bumps-offer-2019-04-16?mod=economy-politics