Posts tagged job market
The Standoff Between Workers and Their Bosses Is Set To Heat Up in 2023
December 15, 2022 // Now, the strong labor market that emboldened workers is softening. The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7% in November—it had gone as low as 3.5%—–and high-profile tech and media companies have recently cut their payrolls through steep layoffs. But that doesn’t mean workers are losing the upper hand, says Thomas Kochan, a professor of employment research at the MIT Sloan School for Management. If anything, the current economic conditions mean labor strife may accelerate next year. “I expect what we’ll see is more conflict, more strikes, and more contract rejections,” Kochan says. Workers are still focused on companies’ profits during boom years, he notes, while companies are starting to trim costs to prepare for an economic downturn. “It’s that difference in expectations,” he says, “that creates a higher probability of conflicts and strikes.”

Opinion: An unprecedented labor shortage
July 26, 2022 // There are 50% more job openings today than at any time before the pandemic. The unemployment rate is near a half-century low. So how did that happen? A combination of government policies that simultaneously reduced the supply of workers and stimulated demand for goods and services. There are 755,000 fewer people employed today than at the start of the pandemic, despite an increase of 4.2 million in the population of people ages 16 and older. employment-to-population ratio, labor force decline, Social Security, welfare-without-work, federal subsidies, Recognized Apprenticeship Programs, Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, education alternatives, encourage flexible work

Millions of people who left the US job market last year plan to stay away in an act of ‘long social distancing,’ fanning the flames of inflation
April 21, 2022 // The dropouts were most likely to be women, those lacking a college degree, and people working in low-paid sectors, the researchers said. A quarter of those unwilling to return to pre-pandemic activities cited pandemic fears as a primary or secondary factor.