February’s hiring rate, at 3.1%, clocked in at the worst pace since the early days of the pandemic and before that since 2011, Labor Department data released Tuesday showed.
US hires plunged to 4.8 million last month, down by 387,000 from a year ago, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“3.1% is not only comparable to the COVID low point – it’s also comparable to late 2009 and early 2010, when the unemployment rate was around 10%,” Guy Berger, director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute, wrote on X. “Hiring was ice cold in February.”
Still, 6.9 million jobs were open last month, matching economists’ expectations while being a tick lower than January’s revised level of 7.2 million positions. January’s hiring rate was also revised higher to 3.4%, the strongest since last June.
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“As with the January and February job reports, it’s a good idea to average out those 2 months’ JOLTS reports,” Berger said on X. “Hiring was stronger than recent trends in January; weaker than recent trends in February. A very tough time to find a job, but not suddenly getting even tougher.”
For the past year, the labor market has been broadly described as “no hire, no fire” — steady for those with jobs, but difficult to break into for those without. That narrative didn’t shift much in February: Tuesday’s data showed that amid weak hiring, the quits rate — a barometer for workers’ confidence in finding another position — was 1.9%. Layoffs and discharges totaled 1.7 million, lower than the same month a year ago.
That’s not to say there hasn’t been any movement. Several companies have announced sweeping layoffs this year, including Amazon (AMZN), UPS (UPS), Block, and Epic Games, though continuing claims for jobless benefits remain low. And workers who are out of a job right now have to contend with an economy that’s adding very few positions.
The US-Israel war with Iran adds another complication to the job market, as any pullback in consumer spending could affect companies’ plans to bring on more workers.