{"id":22164,"date":"2025-11-12T19:26:40","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T19:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/incredipros.com\/?p=22164"},"modified":"2025-11-12T19:26:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T19:26:41","slug":"the-job-hunt-feels-broken-these-6-charts-show-its-not-just-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/incredipros.com\/?p=22164","title":{"rendered":"The Job Hunt Feels Broken. These 6 Charts Show It\u2019s Not Just You"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The job market shouldn\u2019t feel as broken as it does right now \u2013 and the data backs that up.<\/p>\n

The U.S. economy grew by the fastest pace in nearly two years last quarter, the stock market is on a tear and unemployment is still relatively low. Usually, that should mean opportunity is everywhere: companies expanding, workers job-hopping and paychecks rising.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not what\u2019s happening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Bankrate analysis of Labor Department data finds the job market has split into two sharply different worlds \u2014 one for the employed, where the risk of losing a job remains historically low, and one for the unemployed, where job searches are dragging on, hiring has slowed to a crawl and the job market feels like it did in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009.<\/p>\n

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\n This is a tale of two economies in many ways, and a similar divide exists in the job market.<\/q>
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\n \u2014 Mark Hamrick, Bankrate senior economic analyst
\n <\/cite>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Here\u2019s why the job market is worse than it looks on paper and how a booming economy is leaving many workers behind \u2014 in six charts.<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n The frozen job market
\n <\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Bankrate has spent the past month talking with workers about what it\u2019s like to navigate today\u2019s frozen \u201clow-hire, no-fire\u201d labor market. This story digs deeper into federal labor data on unemployment, hiring, layoffs and job growth to understand why so many workers feel stuck right now. The findings point to a slowdown that had been hiding in plain sight, masked by booming headline numbers, long before the federal government shutdown delayed key economic reports.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

1. Hiring is low enough to make many jobseekers feel like they\u2019re in a recession<\/h2>\n

Hiring is bound to cool when the job market slows, Bankrate\u2019s analysis found. What\u2019s unusual, though, is how sharply hiring has fallen compared to the uptick in unemployment.<\/p>\n

Just 3.2% of workers were hired in August 2025, the latest month for which data is available, according to the Labor Department. A hiring rate that low tends to happen when the unemployment rate is 6.8%, Bankrate\u2019s analysis found.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a joblessness rate associated with economic downturns. Excluding the pandemic, unemployment was last that high in 2013, when the job market was still recovering from the Great Recession.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Currently, 4.3% of workers were unemployed as of August, the latest month for which data is available. That\u2019s up from a half-century low of 3.4% almost two years ago, but it\u2019s still below its historic average, Labor Department data shows.<\/p>\n

To Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, the numbers suggest that the labor market is much weaker for job seekers than it is for job holders.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor people who have a job, it\u2019s not so bad, but if you lose your job or if you\u2019re miserable and are trying to move to something better, it\u2019s terrible,\u201d says Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. \u201cIt feels more like a 7% unemployment rate situation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Workers are also remaining out of a job for longer than you\u2019d expect. More than 1 in 4 unemployed workers (26%) have been out of a job for six months or longer, which historically resembles a job market with a 5.6% unemployment rate, according to Bankrate\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n

That compares with a historically low layoff rate. Even as high-profile job cut announcements at major employers \u2014 from Amazon and Microsoft to UPS and Target \u2014 dominate headlines over the past few months, 1.1% of workers were laid off in August, according to Labor Department data. That\u2019s lower than at any point before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Recent data from Challenger, Gray and Christmas showed that job cuts in October hit the highest for the month dating back to 2003. Even so, economists are hesitant to say the labor market is definitively shifting away from a \u201clow-hire, no-fire\u201d environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThose layoff announcements definitely get a lot of attention, but it\u2019s not the whole labor market,\u201d says Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab. \u201cAs far as whether or not we\u2019re in a good place or bad place, we\u2019re in a precarious place. We are balancing on one or two legs when we really should have four. If layoffs do increase, that\u2019s when the stool kind of falls over.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

\n The inside story of America\u2019s slowing job market
\n <\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

Workers are facing longer job searches, while small business owners \u2014 squeezed by higher costs from tariffs and slowing sales \u2014 are struggling to make up the difference. <\/p>\n

Read our coverage<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

2. Today\u2019s unemployment rate may be misleading\u00a0<\/h2>\n

The nation\u2019s unemployment rate may also be making the economy look stronger than it really is, Bankrate\u2019s analysis also found.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unemployment is a measure of how many companies are hiring and how many people are looking for work. Right now, both have stalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost as if labor supply and labor demand are coming down equally,\u201d says Yelena Maleyev, senior economist at KPMG. \u201cIf labor demand dries up even faster with labor supply not growing, that\u2019s when the unemployment rate could tick up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bankrate\u2019s analysis shows that if the labor force had kept expanding at the same pace as last year, the unemployment rate would be closer to 5%, not 4.3%.<\/p>\n

Economists blame a mix of long-term and recent factors that have been steadily shrinking the pool of available workers, such as an aging population and stricter immigration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More broadly, though, the numbers suggest that the economy now has less potential for growth \u2014 and fewer job opportunities. Maleyev estimates employers now need to create only about 30,000 jobs a month to prevent unemployment from rising further.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some economies, 30,000 payrolls is almost recessionary,\u201d she says. \u201cIn an economy with a slowing labor supply, that would be considered a normal labor market.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

3. Employers should normally add more jobs when the economy grows this much<\/h2>\n

The U.S. economy grew 3.8% in the second quarter, the strongest pace in nearly two years, according to the latest data from the Department of Commerce. Historically, that should mean employers create about 264,000 jobs a month, Bankrate\u2019s analysis found. Instead, employers barely created any: 22,000 positions in August and 88,000 over the past three months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Economists are describing the current environment as a \u201cjobless boom.\u201d Companies are pouring money into intellectual property and productivity-enhancing tools like artificial intelligence \u2014 not into hiring more people.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomic growth has been fueled by AI investment and productivity gains, not the robust hiring seen coming out of the pandemic,\u201d Hamrick says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

4. The slowdown means the nation\u2019s most vulnerable are getting left behind even more<\/h2>\n

The job market slowdown isn\u2019t affecting everyone equally. Some groups more vulnerable to economic downturns \u2014 younger workers and Black workers \u2014 have seen a sharper, more painful pullback.<\/p>\n

Bankrate\u2019s analysis found:<\/p>\n