January 19, 2022
Description
a preview of the 2023 Labor Market with Jay Denton, Chief Analytics Officer for Labor IQ including topics such as:
Hiring outlook for 2023
Location and Industry Impacts
Women in the Workforce
Salary Transparency
Impacts of Inflation
About Jay
Jay serves as chief analytics officer for ThinkWhy®, charged with leading the product and market analysis business units for LaborIQ®. His expertise in analyzing and distilling complex data into actionable insights supplies the industry with “why it matters” answers for strategic business and talent decisions. Denton has been featured in Bloomberg Business, Inc., The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Business Insider and many others, and is a sought-after speaker for executive groups, talent acquisition associations and media outlets across the nation.
Denton holds dual degrees in Management Information Systems and General Business from Texas Tech’s Rawls College of Business.
Transcript
Welcome to a live episode our very first of the talent tide podcast presented by job.com. This is the show that ensures you have the information you need to adapt and evolve your workplace culture as you ride the wave of change in talent management. I’m your host, Chris Nichols. And today for this very special first LinkedIn Live episode, we have Jay Denton of Labor IQ. Jay serves as chief analytics officer for think y charged with leading the product and market analysis business units for labor IQ. His expertise in analyzing distilling complex data into actionable insights supplies, the industry with why it matters, answers for strategic business and talent decisions didn’t has been featured in Bloomberg Business. The Wall Street Journal, New York Post Business Insider Business Insider and many others. He is a sought after speaker for executive groups, talent acquisition associations and media outlets across the nation. I vouch for that I’ve seen him live and in person. He also holds dual degrees and management information systems in general business from Texas Tech’s Rawls College of Business. Jay, welcome. Thank you for coming on today.
Yeah, of course, Chris. And I think you set it up in terms of the wave of change that it’s a good way to describe what’s gone on the last couple of years. And what’s likely ahead of us still
Well, you know, it must have been good foreshadowing for us, because we developed this podcast in late 2019 and 2020. And the waves got real rocky real quick after after we created the talent tide podcast. But you right, and it has been a wild. Nearly two, well, yeah, almost three years now since the pandemic hit. And, you know, thinking back on it, and I’ve been telling people this, whenever I speak J, at conferences myself, if you, you look back, it’s not like talent acquisition, and recruiting retention was easy and 2019. Right, every conference you went to all we could talk about was, you know, sub four unemployment. The challenges and retaining, rising pay pay and competitiveness in the market? Doesn’t seem like a whole lot of change. If you ask me.
Yeah, I think it just got more turbulent, you know, in all these factors, and I’m sure we’ll get into a lot of these on the on the call today. But the last two years, it’s just been such an up and down and businesses having to evolve. And we’re just getting back to where we were during like you just mentioned that really tough period before we just weren’t fighting inflation or record turnover, or hiring volumes to re staff all of our organizations. And so, you know, certainly we’re in a different place. Now, even though a lot of the metrics look the same. Yeah, it’s a turbulence behind this. I think as we look forward, it’s going to be a little bit more returned to normal, it’s just when will we actually get to that spot?
Well, returned to normal, right, I think we are normal now. Right? There’s no more new normal that I think we are, are back to what we are going to be and now it’s just, you know, an ever changing workplaces. And I think that is something that we have to also stay on top of that, you know, this is where we are today. And we have to manage what we have. And we if we spent too much time dwelling on, on what it once was, our businesses are probably going to be caught in the past. So, you know, without further ado, let’s just get started talking about 2023. So what are some major themes that we’re going to see in the labor market this year? That you begin to notice?
Yeah, I think you know, when you when you read some of the headlines that are out there, it often misses the context of well, how does that compare to, you know, typically what we would see without the, again, the roller coaster of the last couple years. As an example, the latest job figures that came through one of the articles I read, right when it was released was the lowest job growth in two years, you know, but but are what we’re expecting. And we expected that that type of number of you know, 200 plus 1000 jobs added, we’re getting back to a more normal number, a more normal pace. And so I don’t I wouldn’t characterize 2023 necessarily, is what’s going to be normal. I think that’s probably more 2024. But we’re going to see some of these record figures that we’ve been experiencing over the last couple of years, just slow down and pace, there’s still gonna be a lot of hiring occur. Now, we might not create as many net new jobs but I would still expect there gonna be a lot of companies adding roles, adding departments and so on, while some others go through more pain. So I think 2023 is really going to vary depending on maybe what type of industry what type of job, how you handled the last couple of years. Were you one of those companies who overpaid for certain talent, you might be in a different situation and then people who got poached from who haven’t been in able to hire quite as frequently, wage growth should moderate a little bit? Well, we’ll get into more of those. But I think that there’s probably an inflection point that’s either already here or coming. And things will start to simmer down compared to just how, you know, off the charts, things have been the last couple years,
maybe more of a move back to a more symbiotic relationship between companies and employees rights and maybe a little bit less freedom, I guess you could say, employees have gotten used to significant pay raises, unlimited work from home packages and things like that. And I think that as you seek more competition, we probably start to flex back on that front as well. And there’s some things that, again, some normalization, right, and so when we talk about hiring, I find that or when we talk about the labor market, I guess you could say, at the beginning of every month, we get to these data points that, you know, some might say have huge political implications on a monthly basis. They also affect the stock market quite considerably. But I’m not sure anybody really understands a lot of what the terminology is in those BLS reports. And so, you know, whether they’re location quotients, or or hiring rates, would you mind maybe putting some giving us some layman’s terms around what some of these often quoted in news articles, terms mean to us as average citizens?
Sure, maybe, you know, I think the unemployment rate is one that I would start off with, I don’t know, anybody who, when they’re hanging out with their friends really talks about the unemployment rate. So that, you know, that’s one of the main numbers that gets thrown out there. But it’s, I think, very important when we think about for people out there either and talent acquisition, HR teams, managers, executives, when they’re trying to figure out, how do we get and keep the people that we need to produce our goods and services. So the latest number was three and a half percent. So essentially, 96, and a half percent of people who want a job have a job, that three and a half percent unemployment rate number, on a relative scale, is one of the lowest that we’ve seen in the last almost seven years. So you go all the way back to 19, like late 1953, there have only been nine months, since 19, late 1953, where the unemployment rates been below where we are now. So what does that mean? There’s not a whole lot of talent, just sitting on the sidelines looking for a job that doesn’t have one, the markets been ultra competitive. So when any of us go out to try to hire an individual, it’s extreme competition, because of the number of jobs that are open, that’s held, increased wage growth, and so on. So just know that when you hear unemployment rate, we’re at one of the lowest periods. That’s a big reason why the last couple of years had been a struggle. And when we talk about Yeah, remember, right before the pandemic, we’re basically about where we were then. And so it was tough back then. We’ve just had some other factors between then and now that we’ve been dealing with,
what about labor market participation rate? Jane? You know, whenever you talk to some people, you hear the the often quoted phrase of, well, you know, there’s a ton of people out there that don’t want to work or not participating in the workforce. Do you have any, any any knowledge or insights that you can share about how where we’re at today, maybe compares historically. And I know, this wasn’t set when we talked about free show, too much. So I might be throwing this one on you. But you mentioned in the unemployment rate, you know, those who want to work, right, that are a part of that unemployment statistic. But we also have the labor market participation rate, which also kind of gives us an idea about who is in that labor market?
Yeah, so I’ll talk about within that context, let’s talk about just the labor force the size, we could break down the participation rate. But we’ll keep it real simple and think about how many people and actually have a visual I can share here in a minute that I have on my having a deck that I can show. But how many people do we have actually out there looking for work today, they either have a job or they’re looking for a job relative to right before the pandemic. And that number has kind of ebbed and flowed throughout the last year. But the latest reading or one, the latest readings, we have roughly about half a million more, more people today in the labor force. So either have a job or looking for a job than we did right before the pandemic began. That’s nice. The difference is without the pandemic, we would have had probably two to 4 million more people. Because more and more people would continue either to move here or join the labor force and so on. So I’ll show you how when we think about it, it breaks down. Our question was okay, there, we would have had two to 4 million more people, which would have made a lot of placing these roles that have popped up over the last couple years easier because you simply have a bigger talent pool. So what we want to do is start to break down well, who’s missing? Like who’s missing out of that? So I’ll actually share a visual here with the audience. It’s great. I love visuals. Yeah, so Well, well, let me let me actually yeah, we’ll start here. So we’ll we’ll kind of bounce back and forth just depending on where the conversation goes. But as of at least November, I think there might be one more near Reading. But as of at least or November, we had roughly, you see the the number that’s over on the left, you know, 508,000 more people in the labor force, we have a million more men, but half a million fewer women. So I mentioned a number of we could have had 2 million more with if as many, you know, women were participating now on a relative scale as men, we kind of would have been back to that number. So it’s really how do we figure out how to reengage and get more of those women who were in the labor force back into it. You know, when when the pandemic first hit that the big thing that people pointed to as women were staying home to take care of children who were no longer physically going to school because they were home for the pandemic And that might have been a slice of it. But you know, it turns out, there are a variety of things, it wasn’t one factor, it’s a variety of factors. So this is part of what’s missing, we haven’t had as many women don’t have a visual for this, but we’re also missing people, more people that are over the age of 55. You know, again, for there can be multiple reasons for that one of the biggest things that I would point back to is immigration, you know, we we’ve likely missed out on a million plus people who would have immigrated here to find jobs in a variety of industries, you know, whether it’s manufacturing, agriculture, tech, healthcare, so all these different, you know, all these different industries and types of jobs are missing folks that never moved here, because they couldn’t, everything was shut down from the pandemic. And actually, that’s one of the biggest drivers. I think, for this one of the things I’ll show on this topic. So, you know, we have we have more people in the labor force today than we used to, but I know we have people from all over the country all over the US that are tuned in for this, you know, we ended up making a map to see, well, there are some places that are that are back in terms of their overall labor force, and some that are still far from it. So if you’re in the southeast, southwest, a Texas maybe the Mountain West, up through Utah, Idaho, even over into Oregon, those are some of the states, the ones that you see in blue, here have a larger labor forces today than they did before the pandemic began, if you’re in one of the orange states, you’re likely below and in some cases well below. So it’s made it really hard in some states to find talent relative to others. And it’s fine. You know, I know you were saw you at one of the conferences that we were at here in Texas, it’s much different here than well, I’ll go speak somewhere else around the country where they’re just facing a totally different climate.
So we look at the charts there. And there’s a couple of follow ups that I have, you know, speaking on, on on the genders, and how many more men there are right now. And then women that have entered the workforce? Do we know where those women have went? I mean, you did you did mention, hey, there might be some suggestive evidence that says that they’re, you know, they potentially chose to stay home. But, you know, most schools have been back in session now for quite some time. So looking at that, it doesn’t seem like that maybe is the most justifiable reason for that. But, you know, maybe there are some lingering effects of people maybe getting comfortable with the status of their their households, as it was in maybe a more toned down environment. So is there is there any anecdotal evidence that that you’ve seen, or that it’s been able to be extrapolated from, from the data for that,
I think it’s hard to point to any one specific thing other than the point that, you know, household incomes have have jumped. And so in households where there’s someone else providing an income, and perhaps and maybe they’ve switched jobs over the last couple of years and got a very large pay raise? That could be you know, one of the things that’s contributing to it again, I would also point back to, we would have had women emigrate from other parts of the world who would have moved here and taking jobs as well. And so it’s it’s a variety of factors, I think, that are playing a role.
So immigration was was my second follow up question. So obviously, the borders are shut down for a very long time. Do we do we see any political challenges currently with the whether it’s the current government structure that we have around immigration, kind of a pre and post COVID environment that has Has anything changed for us that that we know of that could be negatively impacting the immigration that we saw pre COVID?
Yeah, that’s starting to loosen up, I believe, with some of the work visas that are that are being issued. Now. Again, it’s it’s terrible in some ways that anytime immigration is brought up, it becomes a political statement. It just it does. But I think when you look at the reality of the situation for us to continue to grow when we have, when, you know, here in our country, if you look at the wave of population, that’s kind of teenaged early 20s, it’s declining sequentially each year, we don’t have as many there weren’t as many people born during those periods. And so to keep up the number of people that would actually join the labor force, immigration is one of the key routes that that the country needs to go. The main challenge really relates back to the fact that that everything was just shut down. Both ways, you know, not not just here in the US, but getting in and out of countries was very difficult. The challenge that creates is you can’t go back and automatically, you just flip a switch and and all of a sudden those those people are here. Now, it’s unfortunately a window of time where we just missed people. And that you can’t just gain that back. And it’s different if they were already here and decided not to work for the last, you know, year or two. And now all of a sudden, that’s a change to make. But when the people never moved here, unfortunately, that’s something that we just we can’t recapture.
And I think it’s important to note that, for the history of our country, immigration has played a significant role in our growth. When you look back at different eras in a history book, you can point to significant gains in immigration alongside the natural birth rate. And so you know, it’s important for us to have a healthy immigration policy that allows for the best and brightest from around the world to be able to come here to our great country and be able to do to establish themselves and grow in their career. So thank you for providing that kind of dose of reality around immigration, because, unfortunately, so many of these things can be, you know, are heavily politicized. But there are underlying market conditions that are at that are in effect here as well. So when we look at, you know, this year and the kind of hiring, you mentioned early on as far as labor market and what we are to expect that you see a slowdown, but not a significant slowdown right there. Was there a lot of over hiring, so maybe can you talk about the kind of hiring that we will see this year, and how that compares to what we what we did experienced the last couple, because you mentioned like that largest hiring, or the biggest reduction in hiring in two years. But we also laid off a ton of people about two and a half, three years ago. So can you maybe talk us through what that looks like? And how that looks for the rest of the year? And what kind of hires we should be seeing?
Yeah, you know, I remember, right, as you know, maybe three, six months after, after the pandemic hit, and I was presenting to a group of executive search owners and I was showing what our forecast was for the path back and it kind of scared the room, there they go, how do we hire and train and onboard people that quickly, because the numbers were massive, and they actually we actually recaptured jobs even faster than than what we had projected. What that took was, you know, just incredible, sometimes we would have months where a million new jobs were created, you know, compared to the prior month. And so that’s not normal, you know, if we’re in that pace of around 200,000 or so jobs, or even below that, I mean, before COVID, we would have been predicting somewhere between maybe 150,000, or fewer jobs added per month, we’ve been slowly moderating down to that number. And so it when we think about 2023, that challenge is really going to be Do we have a more significant downturn or not. So we’re seeing early signs from tech companies, from some finance companies. So remember, tech and finances are some of the first industries or types of jobs to fully recover. So it’s kind of a first in first out situation, although that’s not what it has to be, it’s going to depend, we could be in a job loss situation overall, even though some companies will be adding, we could lose half a million or more jobs, we could gain a million jobs. The Wall Street Journal actually does a survey of 60 to 70. Economists every quarter, they just released their their results. It ranges from 4 million jobs added to 4 million jobs lost on the two spectrums, you know, and and then everywhere in between. So our feeling is that it’s really going to be industry by industry, certain types of jobs. I think, again, those that over hired and likely had a lot of wages towards the upper end of the bell curve, if you will kind of hoarded talent over the last couple of years because money was free, because of where interest rates were. That’s where I would expect more job loss to occur. I would say just be careful of reading in the headlines too much when you see layoffs. So the layoffs numbers, it’s hard to look on LinkedIn in the top right corner where the newsfeed is or any sort of new site, you’re gonna see a ton of news about layoffs just know that we’ve been at record lows the last couple of years. Some of this is just again, some companies that might have ever hired, and then others just we haven’t been in a normal level of layoffs. Last thing I’ll point to, I hear this phrase, often, we’re not hiring. And what I would say is companies are still going to be hiring this year we’re projecting something like 64 million plus hires in the US, it’s just gonna be a lot of backfilling. So maybe not as much net new job creation, but there’s still going to be a lot of churn in the labor market. And because of that for you, especially, you know, executives at companies who are making decisions around this, just know that those hiring engines that you have, between recruiting and HR and so on are going to need to stay intact because you’re gonna still gonna be backfilling roles throughout the year.
Absolutely. And backfilling if required as much effort as you know, large amounts of hiring, you have to stay in the market and be present and make sure that people know who you are, and there’s a lot that we can do. Talk about with relation to that, for the the impact on time, I want to talk about another hot news piece of information that we often see whether it’s on mainstream media on LinkedIn when you see that upper right hand corner, but inflation gets talked about on a regular basis right now. We hear it everywhere we were seeing interest rates people are, the housing market has finally kind of not come crashing down. But you know, we the bubble has somewhat slowly deflated over the last six to 12 months. And so, but what does it mean for the labor market? What does that mean for the job market for all of us? employees as well as for companies?
Yeah, which is you’re very familiar with what we do here at labor IQ, we really focus on the compensation side of the equation and where that compensation is heading, wage inflation, in reaction to overall inflation has really jumped up over the last couple of years. And that’s part of what’s created the spread of you might have had an employee that has been happy, but all of a sudden, they’re out there looking for a new job, partially because their costs have gone up. And that’s driven up kind of where the new market rate is for salary, which is where we really focus. So for one, you know that to break down because people ask us this often, and how does that how does inflation relate back to me keeping employees or where wages are moving, or what’s happened to the overall economy. So the good thing about inflation coming down, is that it’s costing, you know, employees less just in their personal lives, for their groceries, and for what it might cost to drive to work, and so on. And so that’s going to put a little bit less pressure on individuals to maybe go out and look in the job market. So from an employer’s point of view, I think that’s, that’s a good thing. The the downside of it is to combat inflation, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates, which has now started to impact certain industries. So the really easy one we can point to is what it’s done to mortgage rates, which has slowed down the buying of homes. So you know, we’re starting to see the finance industry obviously, start to struggle with that. So raising interest rates is having an impact on where jobs are created, or where jobs are being cut. It impacts consumers. So, you know, prices are still up for food and otherwise, and so any credit cards, they go out to buy a car today, and what that car is gonna cost them due to interest rates for the car loan. So it’s squeezing down, and it’s lowering demand on how many goods and services people can buy. So if they can’t buy as many things, then companies don’t need to produce as many things. So all of it is just basically slowing stuff down. So it’s just not as heated as it was the last couple of years. And that’s why again, this year won’t quite be normal. I think once we kind of get on the other side of you start to see these costs coming down, interest rates can then start to come down as well. And hopefully we get on the other side of this where things are a little bit more steady,
then we head into an election year. And we know that election years are also crazy Jay so
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So just because I want to get to a few more questions here, but there are some questions coming in, I want to encourage listeners to ask any questions that they have related to compensation related to labor market. We will definitely be getting to those shortly here near the end. But we love those those questions. So keep shooting them in. So you talked a little bit about salaries and impacts on that. So one of the things that I love about labor IQ, and one of the reasons why we chose to begin partnering with labor IQ just a few years ago was the ability to put in locations, salary experiences, or sorry, years of experience, college degree versus no college degree, job types, etc, and be able to compare markets to markets. But how do you think all of the impacts that we’ve seen from inflation will impact the growth of salaries this year? You kind of mentioned a little bit what industries maybe do we expect to see an increase in salaries more so than others say like technology where we’re seeing, you know, layoffs occurring? Or is there any kind of industry overview that you can provide with relation to salaries?
Yeah, overall? Yeah. You know, some people on here might have seen articles we were picked up in whether it was Business Insider, or Bloomberg or some others last year where we really focused on that gap between if you if you surveyed all the workers and you asked them, you know, what are you making today versus looking at where the new market is for people getting hired? Overall, we tend to see a gap of around 7%. So if somebody left their job, they would end up getting somewhere potentially it depends on the role and the location, all that but they could end up getting a 7% or even at Double digit increase, oftentimes switching to another company, when you start to talk about the number of job openings, likely coming down the number of new opportunities out there a little bit less competition for talent, it should start to cap that upper end of the price range. And so we saw new salaries, expand, expand, expand, I think we’ll start to see them slow down in terms of that top rate. And so it’ll allow companies to take a breath and not worry about some of these life changing offers that many of their employees are getting. And that’s, that’s what they’re leaving for. So overall, would you say there’s going to be less pressure on the top side in terms of what new salaries have been, that should be good for this should be good overall for employer. So starting maybe towards the end of the year, getting back down to where a typical two or 3% maybe in some cases, 4% merit increase? Is okay enough to keep the employee in their seat versus hearing all these other lucrative offers that are out there?
Are you willing to step out on the ledge and name a few industries where you think that we’ll see some of those the most significant wage growth?
Well, I would say on the opposite side, what I would be looking at is technology. That’s where I think that we’ve seen a lot of a lot of these firms over the last few years that, you know, hiring people that did not have the experience they hadn’t, you know, their resume wasn’t fully filled out, but they’re being paid like it was, you know, is if they had had five or 10 years more experience. And so I think we could see people that end up unfortunately, losing their jobs during this transition period that actually take a step back and pay compared to what they might have accepted over the last year or two. And I’m sure that a lot of folks out there have seen something like that, healthcare is going to be one, I think that’s going to, you know, because of the demand for health care, it’s just going to continue to rise. And it’s a really sticky situation, because everyone wants to keep healthcare costs under control, but there’s just going to be sustained demand in that industry. And so I think that’s one where it’s going to be a little bit a little bit harder. You know, over the last couple of years, I would say, specific types of roles, between sales and marketing, as companies really got their revenue engines ramped up, and, you know, trying to capture all of that demand out there. We are also hearing of some companies where is they’re being a little bit more cautious this year, where they’re not, you know, maybe hiring as many salespeople or some of those roles that initially came back very quickly. So those were some I would say, like in the marketing department as an example, where I said 7%, and marketing technology, suppose it might have been 10, or 15% gaps that people were jumping for. Those are ones where I think we’ll see a little bit more wage compression compared to where it’s been the last two years.
So everybody’s favorite topic with relation to wages in the workplace, is around salary transparency. So we’re seeing a lot of adoption of that both voluntarily and involuntarily if you’re in states and cities like New York, in California and places like that. What’s the deal was such wide range is being posted. And and these are these are obviously the the companies that are maybe in voluntarily participating, right? Well, why do we see such large ranges? I saw a recruiter role the other day that was 75,000 to 600,000. How’s that for transparency?
That? Yeah, it’s funny, you brought that up yesterday, there’s a, we saw one from a company that everyone tuned in today wouldn’t would know who they are. And it was a software development role. And I want to off the top of my head, it was it’s similar range was like 90,000 to hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars. I’ve seen some posted through through through articles that were, you know, much higher than that. And so, you know, part of what we’re seeing in terms of the challenges that companies aren’t sure exactly are they is an individual contributor, or somebody that the executive team, and they kind of lump it all together. I will say that overall, you know, we do see that there should actually be a gap, there’s pay transparency and pay equity don’t exactly mean the same thing, though. They support one another. And, you know, in an individual role, it does depend on what responsibilities, what skills you bring to the table, your experience level and so on. And that that’s why that’s why you should see some degree of of, of a range, but not hundreds of 1000s of dollars.
Yeah, unfortunately, you know, companies, it’s like tax codes or anything else, right. Like, if there’s a loophole, they’re going to find a way to combat themselves against it. Right. And so, this just happens to be one way that they have quickly been able to establish that there’s an opportunity. I mean, I’m listening to Sirius radio this morning and on my way to take my kids at school and evidently Netflix is hiring a flight attendant for their private jet. I believe that pay transparency that they have when there was $380,000 a year was was their salary that they had listed for that job. And so, you see, in that scenario, their probably gonna get quite a few applicants, they’re probably going to have their pick of the litter when it comes to flight attendants. But, you know, if you’re posting very wide ranges, I honestly think that makes you look like a dishonest employer in in the marketplace and unwilling to have the conversation about what reality is, I think it’s actually more harmful than not sharing that information at all. If you’re if you’re sharing such a wide range that it seems unrealistic,
yeah, I think what we really focus on to help people with is making sure that you know, from a pay equity standpoint, for in that location for that market, if you’re somebody who’s brand new to the role, versus somebody who’s been doing it eight years, and you’re a company trying to figure out that range, there is that difference. And that’s where from a pay equity standpoint, we try to figure out and help people with what’s the real rate that should be offered, regardless of where they worked before, race, gender, any of that this is the role that makes this is what makes sense for that market. That, you know, that role that you’ve defined.
So we’ve got some questions here that I want to get to now, Jay. And obviously, labor IQ, does a lot of work around compensation and wages. And and those hard numbers and value is great for the checkbook. But there’s also a lot of other in the making. And there’s also a lot of other, you know, non-compensation related rewards that companies use? Do you have any thoughts or opinions about what what you all are seeing that’s helping to drive any attraction or retention related numbers for not just this year, but in the coming years? You know,
I would say a lot of it just gets back to businesses running and treating their employees the way that they should. Now, I do think it comes down to individual employees and what they value, we focused obviously a lot on compensation. But there are other things around vision of the company, am I working somewhere why where I’m really aligned and understand their vision, any sort of training that they can get to really propel them in their careers, autonomy to actually do their job that the way that they believe there are a variety of those types of things. Obviously, the one that’s been flexed the most over the last couple of years has been work from home, you know that and what I feel I can I think you alluded to it a little bit at the beginning of the call is that’s been used as one of those other types of benefits that we could see swing back a little bit the other direction, I think over the next year or two is, it’s really been an employee’s market. And if things start to tighten up, it becomes a slightly bit of a more employers market. That’s the one I’m really focused on that will be interesting to see new companies start to change their policies a little bit, because times are now starting to tighten up. And they’re going to have potentially some more talent that they could choose from. I will find that interesting, see how that plays out over the next year or two,
as will I, because I have seen numbers and reports and I wish I hadn’t had some of them written down just to be able to bring them up for this today. But, you know, I have seen various reports, state things such as employees are willing to take less money in order to have workplace flexibility, right have the ability to work from home, it has become so meaningful to certain populations of people that they’d prefer to make less money and work from home than they would to be paid more and go into an office. And I think that companies need to be aware of who they employ, the types of culture that they have created. I think that I think that who piece though is really important. Understand your employees understand what they value, understand where they might live, what makes them tick, and get to know them to understand how it’s going to affect your particular organization. So what about another question here around women in the kinds of roles that they may have historically predominantly worked in, such as hospitality nursing teachers, three pretty significant industries that have been affected significantly by the pandemic that we went through? And a lot of burnout seemed like the great resignation, right was fueled by burnout from the pandemic. We have had to see that term in a long time since it’s 2023 Nobody’s talking about their great resignation anymore. But how do companies do a better job of ensuring that there is more flexibility, fair play and benefits for, you know, minority groups? Jay, any thoughts around that topic?
Well, I’ll focus on what you brought up at the beginning part, which is, I think, a great observation for for the folks that are attending out there. Part of the impact of women not being back as much maybe as men does break down into certain types of jobs. And similar to the burnout you mentioned, as well. So one challenge in healthcare. If you look at nurse practitioners, overwhelmingly female, and that’s been one of the roles that you could point to over the last two years where there has been just a ton of burnout. Other roles that are more in and face to face, whether you mentioned hospitality or other sorts of certain personal services sectors that because the pandemic just took longer to come back and some of the wages might not have been as attractive and those employers didn’t, didn’t adjust to where the new market was. And I think some of those are the things that, that cause that difference. It works as well, you mentioned by if you take my race, there are certain types of jobs that tend to, you know, when you start to break things down by race also show an influence of how quickly they came back or not. Those are some of the undertones I think that that have led to who’s rejoined the labor market? And who is not?
Another question that we have is around generations and their impact in the workplace. And I don’t know how closely this gets into your expertise, but compensation is part of that conversation. And so when we start looking at more and more boomers exiting every year also means that that Gen Z is entering the workforce, and that they can’t all be YouTube influencers, J. So how are they going to impact the workforce? What is that going to look like, as far as not just our labor rate participation? How they how they view the future of work? Any any any thoughts on that?
Yeah, my, my daughter is 16, I remind her that the YouTube influencer route is probably not the ideal primary target. So that hits close to home. Yeah, you know, it’s that Wall Street Journal put out an article recently that that dove into this a bit, I can send it to you afterwards if you’d like to. But it really talked about the differences of it’s almost, you know, ambition of really giving everything to the company versus I just want to go provide value. And then I have the rest of my life that I have where I really want to spend my time. And I think that is going to be one of the driving factors. It’s different or just generational level, you know, nine to five face to face, and so on versus what the younger generation expects in terms of, I can work when I want where I want as long as I do my job, and I just want to do enough, and this is certainly overgeneralizing. But if you look at that Wall Street Journal article, it’s a clear difference generation by generation in terms of really how engaged and how much are you giving all of yourself to your company all of the time. And it’s gonna be interesting to see how that unfolds is we start to shift generations in and out of the labor force.
Final question, before we wrap up? I don’t think we have any more. Are we in a recession? Or are we not J?
It? I think that depending on other technical versions of a recession, there are what it feels like to be in a recession. Some I think some industries and some types of jobs already are, I think you can easily you can easily say that when you look at how home sales have declined for a record number of months, even more than a decline following the Great Recession, which was caused by a housing bubble, and it was partially, you know, there are certain spots where yes, I would say we already are there gonna be some industries and some types of jobs that will just continue to go through this. We’ll we’ll see. It’ll, it’ll depend on which ones but yeah, I would expect more of a slowdown though, as we look over the next say, three to six months, the general consensus is that if we are in a recession, or we get into one that it will be a little bit more shallow and not as long as what we’ve typically experienced. So by the end of this year, while we probably have a tough several months ahead of us, and an aggregate level, expectations are by the end of this year or early next year, things are back on the upswing just not at the boiling point that they were the last few years.
So plenty of opportunity for growth, plenty of opportunity for business expansion. I think as as we move forward. I’m excited for 2023 I know it’s easy to be bogged down by news articles, and the things that you see that grab headlines, do you have any closing thoughts around? How to Stay positive? When there’s so much negativity around around us, I guess you could say it’s kind of a general kind of general negativity, but a lot of it is centered around work, you know, inflation, so many things that are impacting us as as humans are related to our work. So any any thoughts on that?
Yeah. Consider how resilient we have all been in the last two to three years, we’ve overcome so many obstacles, I mean, think back, you know, all of a sudden, a new strain of COVID would come out and businesses would have to close their doors again and back and forth, and back and forth. And you know, I think so much character has been built with businesses and people and so on the last two to three years that needs to be used as we make decisions this year and be more resilient than typically we might be in the type of slowdown we could have ahead of us. The number one thing I would say is don’t get too wrapped up in the headlines without digging deeper. Because there are anytime there’s a slowdown, it’s you know, people are looking for that next thing to really jump on and say Oh, this is the big one. Just know that again, there’s gonna still going to be a lot of hiring that that will occur. Shira,
thank you very much, Jay. One of the one of my favorite followers on LinkedIn is both your personal account and labor IQ. If you are listening and following along today, I recommend you you searching those two accounts out giving them a follow up like, Jay, if somebody wanted to reach out to you directly, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Honestly, I would say, Yeah, follow us on LinkedIn, labor IQ on LinkedIn, you can reach out to me as well. And we can we can stay connected that way. Awesome.
Well, I’m a big fan of labor IQ. If you’ve never heard of it, I am not left for making these marketing pitches for any anybody that we have on on the show. But I do think it’s a it’s an extremely valuable tool, and one that we use on a regular basis, both internally and externally at job.com with our clients and to attempt to evaluate and measure how we are doing as far as pay equity goes, as well. That’s a wrap on another episode of the talent tide podcast. If you would like to share this particular episode, you can do so on LinkedIn. We will also be uploading it to YouTube this afternoon, as well as you’ll be able to find the audio version on Spotify, Apple or Google or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for joining and we look forward to seeing you again. Thank you all