If the April ADP report is any indication, then economists and the markets are in for a surprise. Payroll processor ADP’s monthly look at private-sector employment activity, released two days before the BLS’ employment report, is sometimes looked at as a preview of what to expect from the federal data. But it’s not clear yet how much further consumer spending could drop as a result of not only persistently high prices and increasing interest rates but also tighter lending conditions that result from broader banking turmoil, EY economist Gregory Daco noted. Inflation-adjusted consumer spending was flat in March, marking the fourth time in five months that expenditures held steady or declined, according to Commerce Department data released last week.Ĭonsumers are “retrenching,” Tim Quinlan, a Wells Fargo economist told CNN. However, they remain below historical averages: In the decade before the pandemic, weekly claims averaged 311,000.
Weekly jobless claims have trended up in recent weeks - initial filings climbed 13,000 to 242,000 last week. “Retailers and consumer goods manufacturers are preparing for a tightening in consumer spending, particularly with the Fed’s hike to interest rates in an attempt to control inflation,” Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a statement. The largest share of the cuts occurred at retailers, who slashed 14,689 jobs. David Ryder/Getty ImagesĢ023 layoff tracker: The latest on which companies have announced job cuts headquarters on Novemin Seattle, Washington. Outside of 2020, it’s the highest year-to-date total since 2009, according to the report.Ĭorporate office buildings rise above The Spheres at the Inc. US employers announced 66,995 job cuts last month, bringing the January-April total to 337,411, according to a report released Thursday by outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. However, layoff announcements continue to accumulate. However, that figure remains below the February 2020 rate of 63.3%. The labor force participation rate continued to climb in March, landing at 62.6%, which matches a pandemic-era high. “If more people are job losers, that’s concerning,” Bunker said. To try to glean whether a downswing is turning into a downturn, Bunker said he plans to dig into the unemployment rate, specifically the labor force flows and reasons for unemployment. Even so, that jobless rate would still be hovering around a historically low range. “Something that starts as a cooldown can turn into a downturn pretty quickly,” he cautioned.Įconomists are expecting the unemployment rate to tick up to 3.6% from 3.5%, according to Refinitiv.
However, it’s unclear how much of a slowing may occur, Bunker said. The moderation, which is expected to continue, is the desired and logical outcome of the Federal Reserve’s inflation-fighting barrage of 10 consecutive interest rate hikes. “JOLTS is now really pointing in the similar direction as other labor market data: That the labor market is cooling off,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director at the Indeed Hiring Lab, the economic data insight and analysis arm of job website Indeed. It could also hammer home the fact that the US labor market has indeed cooled down from its red-hot recovery over the past two years.Įarlier this week, the latest labor turnover report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics - the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for March - showed that job openings declined, hiring was flat, quits trended down and layoffs spiked. Excluding the losses during the first year of the pandemic, that would be the smallest monthly gain since December 2019. If the latest employment trends continue and economists’ forecasts prove true, Friday’s jobs report could bring back that pre-pandemic feeling.Įconomists expect the US economy to have added 180,000 jobs in April, according to consensus estimates on Refinitiv.
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