Time now for your money with Marty and all
signs were pointing to a cooling labor market.
But instead the latest jobs report showed the unemployment rate fell
to 3.4% in April after 253,000 jobs were added last month.
But hiring isn't strong across the board and it's really
concentrated in a handful of industries.
So here to break down the latest data for us is of course, Marty Cancer.
So let's just start with that strong hiring and you know,
where we're seeing the sectors that are, are really still popping.
Well, there, there are about three really important things to know here.
Number one,
the unemployment rate went down because about 43,000 people left the job market.
Those are retirees who might be looking work, who,
who told the labor department I'm not doing it anymore.
So the unemployment went down because of that.
The increase in the, in the,
in the jobs unexpected and not terribly good news if you're
trying to fight inflation because that's supposed to be reduced.
And we saw also about
the posted jobs unfilled or 9.4 million that's down from 11.4 million about five,
five months ago, which is a good sign, but it's still hot that
it's still very hot but, but the nine million is normal for open jobs. So that's ok.
Uh The jobs that are being lost now are the ones that,
that really grew exponentially during uh the pandemic uh like technology jobs,
uh uh service sector jobs, the zoom jobs, things like that and they're,
they're being
brought back to Earth
because fewer people are relying on that. Technology. Manufacturing is being
let go because manufacturing is down, productivity costs are going up.
So you're seeing some layoffs there,
businesses are reacting to the Fed's policies but still our
inflation rate is about 5%. The FED wants to get it down to two.
It's a long way to go from here,
right?
When we take a look at the actual numbers,
we know the gains were in professional and business services, health care,
leisure and hospitality,
specialized construction contractors and then food
and drinking services in total,
those five sectors that I just mentioned, they were hiring of 165,000 people.
Yeah. Well, construction is very interesting.
Construction costs are higher because of inflation.
Plus the borrowing costs are now 500 basis points more than they were a year ago.
So it costs more to borrow money to do construction.
So and tourism, you know, and the leisure and hospitality, it's, they just, they,
they are
hired and now they're just coming back to earth. Right?
Also because we know people are actually starting to travel again
and go to hotels and do all those kind of things.
And you know, that area really saw so many cuts early days.
Well, also in that sector,
prices are coming down and that's why people are traveling.
And really last year was a
pandemic, you know, pandemic, post pandemic travel.
And people are saying I got to get out of here. Now.
It's different and the industry,
profit loss is reacting to the over hiring and the reducing costs.
And that's why we're seeing layoffs there as well. All right.
Well, we take a look at that conference board.
They recently, you know,
published some new information that index and it's that risk
of job loss for different parts of the economy.
What did, what did you pull from that?
Well, the big,
the big point from there is that the jobs that are
going to be lost are the ones that are impacted by
the financial recession that we're in right now. It costs more to borrow.
And that means people can't do expansions,
the minimum wage and the wages have gone up.
So we have to,
they have to come back to earth in terms of how many people they can afford to hire.
All right,
let's talk about women in the workforce when we
take a look at the participation rate that 25
54 year old. It's actually 83.3% matching a level that we haven't seen since 2008.
Yeah, the women are 77% increase.
That's big because remember the, the reason why the, uh, uh,
there were problems during the pandemic is that
women weren't coming back to the workforce,
they had their, their care giving responsibilities.
So now coming back to the work force will be that second income
in a family to afford child care so they can work full time.
So that's a good thing. We're seeing that women are coming back in.
It's an important factor. All right, we love seeing it and we love having you here.
Thank you so much, Marty. Good to be here.
All right, Shannon, you know, obviously a lot to go through there,
especially when you take a look at the different layoffs and so much hiring,
but we're going to have to watch and see what the fed does next.