ZipRecruiter’s Chief Economist, Julia Pollak, joins TheStreet to explain why the number of layoffs we’ve seen might not be as bad as we think.
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00:00 Julia, this time last year, the talk of the town and the talk of the tape was all about
00:04 tech layoffs.
00:05 We are continuing to see layoffs across a lot of industries to kick off 2024.
00:10 Do you expect we could be past the worst of it in terms of recruitment and job retention
00:15 and where do you see those trends going?
00:17 Sure.
00:18 So there have been large layoffs in household name companies, these major tech companies.
00:24 But overall over the past year, layoffs have been unusually low.
00:27 The layoff rate is 1.0 percent in 2016, '17, '18, '19, it was 1.2 percent.
00:33 So we're actually seeing about 20 percent fewer layoffs and firings than is normal.
00:38 And the U.S. worker is experiencing unprecedented job security.
00:42 Employers are hanging on to the workers they've got.
00:43 They're not hiring very quickly.
00:45 The hires rate is only about as fast as it was in 2014.
00:50 And so companies are choosing to sit this period out and not invest aggressively and
00:55 expand aggressively.
00:57 I think they are anticipating that financial conditions for those kinds of expansions and
01:02 investments will improve in the second half of the year.
01:05 And so they're holding off in many cases.
01:08 But for most businesses, business is still good.
01:10 Sales are good.
01:11 The U.S. consumer is strong and still spending.
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