Bob FraserCFO & Macro Strategist | Data-Driven Investing Expert | Speaker & Author

What’s happening with the job market?

Name: What’s happening with the job market?
Uploaded: 2024-08-13T16:08:52+00:00
Duration: 46 s
Channel: Bob Fraser
Description: In this segment, the speaker explains that the job growth observed in recent years primarily reflects the recovery of positions lost during the COVID‑19…

13 Aug 2024 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker explains that the job growth observed in recent years primarily reflects the recovery of positions lost during the COVID‑19 shutdown rather than genuine new expansion. Because the labor market has simply returned to the level it would have been at had the pandemic not occurred, the data can misleadingly suggest a booming economy. The speaker concludes that the current labor market is essentially back to a pre‑COVID normal, not a hot or unusually strong state.

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A lot of the job growth that we've seen over the past few years has been a return to jobs. We had a pandemic, the world was shut down, then it had to get started up again. It takes a while to get machines up and running and people up and running. So a lot of the job growth that we've seen over the past few years has been a return to jobs, but it doesn't reflect that way in the job data. It's just like, oh, we have lots of jobs, as opposed to we're getting back the jobs we lost during COVID along with growth. So the bottom line is right now we are where we would be job growth-wise had there been no COVID. But because it looked so robust over the last few years, there was a belief that we had a really hot economy. So the best way that I could describe today and right now is we're back to normal.