The Job Market Has Been Like Musical Chairs. Will the Music Stop?

“Everybody’s feeling the whiplash,” said Suzanne Bates, partner and managing director of the corporate strategy firm BTS. “It’s this strange reversal of fortunes where everybody has been incredibly busy — and they still have needs, clients and customers — but at the same time there’s a lot of whispering in the hallways about hiring freezes.”

The job market last year and earlier in 2022 was like musical chairs, offering record opportunities for hopping from seat to seat. Now many feel that the music is about to stop.

Meredith McCleary checks her LinkedIn every morning and sees images of her own economic pessimism staring back at her. Many of her friends in the mortgage lending industry are posting about layoffs. She scrolls through hours-old openings that have already received hundreds of applications. Ms. McCleary, who was laid off in August, spends 40 hours each week at the kitchen table searching for jobs.

A year ago, she had switched to a new team at her company, buoyed by the labor shortage. Now she feels that the economy has turned on her. On top of the narrowing job pool, everything — soda, bacon, gas — keeps getting pricier.

“After the shutdowns, everything was coming back to life, things were getting better, you had opportunities to choose from,” said Ms. McCleary, 38, who lives in Indianapolis. “It kind of felt like everything went south economywise.”

The economic angst is audible in workshops that train and support job seekers. Toni Frana, a career services manager at FlexJobs, hosted a webinar last week on recovering from layoffs, with tips on topics like how to explain gaps on a résumé. Ms. Frana had offered this layoff-specific program early in the pandemic — but this fall, it seemed necessary to bring the session back.

Members of the Alphabet Workers Union, who fear that a recession could mean temporary workers at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, will not get their contracts renewed, have created internal chat forums where workers can share updates about their contracts and inform one another of job openings.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/business/job-market-tightening.html