WSJ Your Money Briefing - Hourly Workers Aren’t So Hard to Find Anymore

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Companies are pulling back on hiring hourly roles such as truck drivers, maintenance workers, and cleaners — that were once in high demand. Wall Street Journal reporter Chip Cutter joins host Ariana Aspuru to discuss this shift in the labor market and how job-seekers can find their next gig.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zscaler extended its Zero Trust architecture with powerful AI engines trained by 500 trillion daily signals to prevent ransomware and AI attacks that target business. Zscaler Zero Trust plus AI. Learn more at zscaler.com slash Zero Trust AI. Here's your Money Briefing for Thursday, August 15th. I'm Ariana Espudu for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for JR Whelan. Employers once scrambled to find hourly workers like cooks, cleaners, retail workers. But now companies are pulling back on hiring.

And it's thrown some job seekers for a loop. A lot of them just gotten used to this really strong job market we've seen over the past couple of years where it was really a candidate's job market where there were lots of open rolls. We saw employers really having to act quickly. And right now we're starting to see that pendulum swing back to employers where the companies have the upper hand once again. We'll talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Chip Cutter after the break. AI may be the most important new computer technology ever, but AI needs a lot of processing speed, and that gets expensive fast. Upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI. OCI is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs.

Do more and spend less, like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash Wall Street, oracle.com slash Wall Street. The job market is slowing down for roles that were once in high demand. WSJ reporter Chip Cutter joins me. So Chip, break down this shift for me. How has the job market for some of these labor jobs changed? For months and months we've heard repeatedly companies tell us we can't find enough cooks, we can't find enough maintenance workers, truck drivers, cleaners, all of these hourly roles that have been a real bright spot in the economy. So even as companies started

to pull back on corporate recruiting, so hiring fewer white collar professionals in tech and banking and other fields, there was still tons of strength in the hourly job market. And we're starting to see that change now. And a number of employers are saying that it's gotten a lot easier to fill these roles. They maybe are posting fewer openings. And we're seeing the job market start to slow here, and we're starting to see weakness in hourly roles too. So that's significant.

It could have, you know, effects for millions of workers. In your story, you start with something really interesting, which is you physically saw a sign of this. Run me through that. Yeah. So, I was in the bowels of Boston's Logan Airport. It was a delay. I was walking.

I was changing terminals. And I saw a sign outside the door of ABM Industries. And this is a company that employs cleaners to clean the airport terminals there. And the sign actually said something really interesting, and it was, we are currently not hiring, and all caps lettering, please keep checking. And to me, that was just such a significant signal of how things had shifted.

For years, these have been exactly the type of role that companies couldn't find, and here we have an example of a company saying, we are just not hiring, come back later. And when I reached out to the company, they told me they had recently had a successful job fair, they got plenty of applicants for that, they still just not hiring, come back later. And when I reached out to the company, they told me they had recently had a successful job fair, they got plenty of applicants for that, they still have open hiring. But again, it's a signal of sort of how employers are approaching this moment in the job market.

COLLEEN O'BRIEN Tell me about some of the other types of jobs that are being affected by this. MARK MIRCHANDANI We're seeing everything from, if you think about in aviation, Spirit Airlines recently said it was going to stop flight attendant hiring for the moment and was going to give some people the option to have unpaid leaves of absence. So that was a move to sort of cut cost. We've seen John Deere cut hourly manufacturing rolls. And we've also just heard from a number of employers like the home builder,

D.R. Horton, for example, has said it has enough workers to build houses. And Bright Horizons, the childcare provider, says it's having an easier time staffing its facilities. So you just look across the economy and it's not always that we're seeing lots of layoffs in these hourly rolls. Like we're not really seeing that yet. The job market still remains fairly strong, really, if you look historically. It's a 4.3% unemployment rate as of July. But we're starting just to see these shifts.

There's less attrition inside a lot of companies that makes companies not have to hire for these roles. And then, you know, we're starting to see wage growth start to slow too. All signs that the hourly job market is starting to see some weakness. And we've been seeing companies announce layoff after layoff throughout this year. One of the things you wrote about in your story is the idea of a big silent layoff in terms of these hourly jobs. What does that mean and sort of how is that different? So this was something that's really interesting. Sort of the term of silent layup really means companies shrinking their workforce through

attrition and by hiring fewer workers. And sometimes what we see happening is companies will lose people, people will quit, and they'll just decide not to replace these positions. So that's sort of happening behind the scenes too. We've heard of a number of companies that are automating roles away. So they'll say that we think tech, for example, can take the roles of some of these call center agents. So let's not fire those people, but when they leave, we just won't replace them. And so that's just another sort of factor happening here that might be leading to some of this

slowdown. You and WSJ reporter Lauren Weber spoke to some people who are on the hunt for the next job. They're in the thick of it. What did they tell you? Yeah. So we spoke with a restaurant worker in New York City, for example, who left his job fairly recently and just thought he'd have no problem finding a new position. And he said that in the past, that was always the case. He could easily find more work. But instead, he's put in applications, he's just not getting anywhere. That's a story we've heard echoed by other workers where they just feel like they're sending their

resumes into the abyss. They're just not getting anything back. And so this particular person, who was talking to my colleague Lauren Weber, said that he just felt that he kind of regretted some of his moves because he was frustrated by just how difficult it's proven to be to get a hospitality job in New York. Were they sort of expecting a different job market going into the job search? Yeah, I think a lot of them just gotten used to this really strong job market we've seen over the past couple of years where it was really a candidates job market where there were lots of open roles.

We saw employers really having to act quickly and offer higher pay rates and just to try to create a better environment for employees. Right now we're starting to see that pendulum swing back to employers where the companies have the upper hand once again. I think that's frustrating a lot of workers. Are there some industries on the other side of this that are still adding jobs? We're still seeing some industries that are adding jobs. So you think about healthcare, for example, it added 55,000 jobs in July.

Construction, it added 25,000. Leisure and hospitality added 23,000. So still industries where we're seeing strength, but then you look at sort of the opposite of that, we're seeing jobs really fall fall and that's like areas like the information sector So it lost 20,000 jobs So these are more sort of white-collar roles that are continuing to see some weakness What economic factors could lead to more demand for these hourly workers? Yeah, it's really gonna depend on consumer demand So if more people are dining out and staying in hotels and needing people to clean their rooms

That's gonna lead to job growth. And so we've seen in the earnings reports of hotel companies, for example, in recent weeks, I mean, they are starting to see some signs of a slowdown. That can all lead into different appetites to hire more people. How can these job seekers navigate this lower job market for the time being? Yeah, it's still the case where job seekers have to think creatively about how do you get the attention of a recruiter. So oftentimes still, I mean, it seems outdated, but it is kind of like who you know. I mean, part of it is trying to sort of figure out who was the person

actually doing the hiring and trying to get on that person's radar versus just competing against some bot or algorithm somewhere that's screening out lots of resumes. Certainly word of mouth, personal referrals, all of that can really be helpful in a job market like this where there's more competition, you're up against various sort of recruiting tools, they're trying to screen out lots of applicants, so trying to bypass some of that can be really helpful. That's WSJ Reporter Chip Cutter and that's it for your money briefing. This episode is produced by me, Arianna Aspuru, with supervising producer Melanie Roy.

Thanks for listening.