TJ Walker argues the job market is frozen, not collapsing: hiring at 3.1%, quits at 1.9%, layoffs at 1.1%. This paralysis is worse than a recession because it kills career momentum for recent grads and career-switchers. Stop clicking resumes and network instead.
Chapters
Ultimize. What if I told you the job market isn't collapsing, it's freezing? And that might actually be worse. According to a new report highlighted in Fortune, the US hiring rate has dropped to just 3.1%, the lowest level since April 2020, when the economy was literally shut down during COVID Let that sink in. Back then, businesses were closed by law. Today, businesses are open, at least legally, and still not hiring. This isn't a crash. This is something eerier. It's an economy stuck in place. Imagine a game of musical chairs where the music just stops, but nobody moves. Nobody sits down, nobody stands up. Everybody just freezes and looks around. That's the job market right now. People aren't quitting. Quits are stuck at just 1.9%. Companies aren't firing— layoffs are only 1.1%. But here's the killer: they're not hiring either. So if you don't already have a chair, you're just standing around forever. That's not stability, that's paralysis dressed up as calm. And economists are starting to use phrases that should make you very uncomfortable: brutal job market, locked-out market. That means if you're young, switching careers, or just got laid off, good luck. The door isn't just closed, it's bolted. This is the kind of job market that quietly destroys momentum. You graduate, no jobs. You want a raise, you stay put. You hate your boss, you stay anyway. It's like everyone is trapped in a bad relationship with their employer. I'm not happy, "but I'm not leaving." And when millions of people feel that way at the same time, that's just not an economic problem, that's a psychological one. Now, here's where it gets even more interesting and more dangerous. Normally, if you lose a job, you can fall back on something— hospitality, retail, construction— but those sectors, according to the data, are slowing down too. The safety net has holes in it. Think about that for a second. The backup plan doesn't exist. It's like jumping out of a plane and finding out your parachute is on back order. And economists are saying this could get worse because if companies can't grow, they don't just stop hiring, they start cutting. The phrase used was chilling: we could go from no hiring to firing. That's not a slowdown, that's the moment the floor drops out. And here's the communication lesson, the part most people miss. This kind of economy is incredibly deceptive because on the surface everything looks fine. Unemployment around 4%, that's pretty good. Layoffs, low. So leaders go out and say the economy is strong, but that's like saying a car is fine because it's not crashing even though the engine has completely stalled. This is where bad communication becomes dangerous. Because if leaders describe this as stable, people stop preparing. If they call it strong, business delay, tough decisions. And if they ignore it completely, you get blindsided. The best communicators don't sugarcoat. They translate reality early because by the time everyone feels it, it's already too late. And one final factor hanging over all this. Rising energy prices and global conflict. Oil prices are already surging, and economists warn this could be the final straw that pushes companies from freezing hiring to cutting jobs. In other words, this quiet, frozen economy, it might not stay quiet for long. And when it finally moves, it's probably not going to move in the direction people are hoping for. Now, let me be clear, I am not predicting a recession. The world is filled with the so-called economic seers who have predicted 19 of the last 5 recessions. There's nothing easier than predicting a recession. Now, there's always going to be a recession at some point in the future. That is the nature of capitalism. But you get no credit for saying a recession is coming and it doesn't come until 3 years later. You don't get credit for that. So I'm not going to fall into that trap. I do think these are perilous times for young people just graduating from college or high school, if you're trying to get a job out of high school, someone who's taken time off, perhaps you've taken time off to raise a young child, now they're in school, you want to reenter the job market. Maybe you're a senior citizen and you thought you wanted to retire and now you said, no, I want to get back to work. These are tough times and it's going to require some adjusting. Here's the number one adjustment I would offer or suggest to whether it's young people out of college or anyone, do not think anyone owes you a job. Now, I'm sorry, and there are some cultures where, whether it's Scandinavia or other places where you kind of do have a right to a job. That's just not the way it is in the United States. I wish you could have a job, but you're not owed a job, number 1. Number 2, sitting at home and doing this. Those of you listening on the podcast, I'm taking my finger and I'm hitting click send, click send. If you think that's job hunting, wrong. I see countless profiles in major media all the time. Someone saying, 'Well, I sent out 1,000 resumes and cover letters in the last 6 months. I haven't gotten a single job interview.' I'm sorry, that's on you. If you think job hunting is clicking and sending and sitting behind a computer, you're not living in reality. Now sure, some people have gotten lucky that way in the past, but if you're spending more than 5% of your job hunting time clicking and sending resumes, you're wasting your time. You need to be out talking to people, meeting people in the real world, going to lunches, having coffees with friends you went to high school or college with, trying to connect with people in industry, going to free industry events if you can find them. You need to be, if you're online, connecting with thought leaders in the industries and the companies you wanna work with and commenting on their post on LinkedIn and Twitter and X. And Facebook. You need to be making meaningful connections, and then you need to ask those people to help you get in front of the right people for jobs in companies you want. Do not wait until it's officially listed. By then, it's often too late. So there needs to be some new job skills taught in high school and college And the number one thing that should be taught in every one of these classes is if you're sending out resumes and cover letters by looking at a computer screen, you, you deserve to be unemployed the rest of your life if that's the sole extent of what you're doing job hunting. Again, I would say 5% of your time. So do the math. If you're job hunting 10 hours a day, then okay, half an hour should be spent sending resumes and hitting apply to job ones. All the other things should be out meeting with people, talk, call people, call people you used to work with. Doesn't matter if it was a high school internship. Call people and let them know what you want to do. The other thing you got to think about is Do something of value right now. If you have two hands, if you're not physically infirmed in some way, you can clean houses. I had to wash windows at one point in my career, and I'm not talking about in high school. I was in my late 30s. Things had not taken off yet. I was moving— I remember one day I moved a piano into Roosevelt University. For about $50. I wasn't too good to do that. I did it. I needed the money. So if I can do that at 37 with a college degree, you as a newly minted college student can bartend, you can deliver Uber Eats, you can work for Angie's List, you can post your services on Craigslist and do handiwork for people. You don't know how to do it? Guess what? If you've got a cell phone and you've got YouTube, you can find out how to do anything. Make yourself useful, make money, and continue applying for jobs you want, or start your own business. Might not be what you want to do, but anything is better than having month after month go by, click send, click send, click send. That is not real job hunting. Ultimize.
