Companies that have been struggling to fill positions across the US for long periods are now beginning to consider an urgent question Are we really in need of these jobs?
With interest rates rising with stocks falling and the threat of a recession escalating employers are cutting jobs or cutting back on their hiring rates that were once ablaze. Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. Two of America’s most significant private companies have announced that they are cutting out their workforces by the process of attrition. Employment claims, although at a low level, have increased somewhat, based on the four-week moving average, which reduces volatility in the weekly report.
The rate of job advertisements has also slowed down in recent weeks, as per data from Indeed, a career website and it’s not just the tech industry, which is a particularly hard hit: Opportunities for hospitality jobs have decreased, but they’re over levels prior to the pandemic. The vacancies that aren’t filled for longer durations as more cautious executives slow down the recruitment process. In a bid to avoid claiming they’re cutting back or even stopping hiring, employers instead frame their actions in corporate language such as”review of business processes. “review of business processes.”
“They don’t want to talk about a hiring freeze, but what they are doing is adding an extra layer of scrutiny, like saying only the CEO can approve these jobs,” said David Vied, the global market leader in medical devices and diagnostics for the consulting and executive recruitment company Korn Ferry. “There is this stealth slowdown.”
Sure, many jobs are in demand and candidates who are qualified are highly sought-after in the current labor market, with open positions still at records. But the number of vacancies isn’t being filled longer, as per Greg Summers, North American director of the recruiting firm Cielo because it’s more difficult to persuade people to quit their current positions.
White collar workers, who wanted to leave their jobs just days or weeks ago in exchange for a better pay package or a flexible work schedule, now considering whether it’s orth the risk in more turbulent waters According to experts in recruitment.
“The balance of power is shifting,” Vied stated. “There is this erosion of the power of the job candidate.”
Six out of 10 CEOs anticipate to see a recession by the close of the year in the area where their companies are based in, while an additional 15% believe the recession is already in place in the last few months, according to an Conference Board survey of 750 C-suite executives and CEOs which was conducted in the middle of May. The S&P 500 has continued to fall while the Federal Reserve last week raised interest rates by the largest since 1994, with the hope that inflation will slow and that the US unemployment rate will increase to 4.1 percent by 2024, from 3.6 percentage currently.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said last week that policymakers aren’t trying to “induce a recession now,” however,”the “pathways” to overcoming inflation and maintaining a robust economy “have become much more challenging due to factors that are not under our control.” The critics of Powell, such as former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, expect the unemployment rate to rise higher.
Employers are caught up in this economic mess, stricken with open positions they’re unable to be able to fill. They’re also asking themselves if they actually have to fill them.
“Virtually every organization we work with has an absurd number of open job requisitions right now,” said Melissa Swift, the US transformation expert at the workplace consultancy Mercer. “They are empty for long time periods. That’s a sign of crisis as well as an interesting sign that we may not be in need of some of those jobs.
