Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / Is the Jobs Market Back In Balance? | S2 E084 | 09-30-25

Transcript

Is the Jobs Market Back In Balance? | S2 E084 | 09-30-25 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  MeganHorneman: We got a first glimpse of what we may see from a labor market perspective this week.
• 0:05
  MeganHorneman: It's Tuesday, September the 30th, and this is Markets with Megan.
• 0:09
  MeganHorneman: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, hit that alarm bell.
• 0:12
  MeganHorneman: You can share with friends, family, or colleagues that may have questions about really what state is the economy in.
• 0:18
  MeganHorneman: And today we're going to talk about the monthly Jolts Jobs Report.
• 0:23
  MeganHorneman: Now, this data is from the month of August.
• 0:26
  MeganHorneman: We are scheduled to receive data later this week for the month of September.
• 0:30
  MeganHorneman: But this is a good report that we like to look at because it measures really the equilibrium in the labor market.
• 0:36
  MeganHorneman: And what does that mean?
• 0:38
  MeganHorneman: Well, when we were coming out of the pandemic, there was a significant amount of need for workers.
• 0:43
  MeganHorneman: And that resulted in companies having to raise wages to entice employees to come to work.
• 0:49
  MeganHorneman: That resulted in wage pressures.
• 0:52
  MeganHorneman: So this Jolt's report breaks down the amount of job postings that are out there.
• 0:56
  MeganHorneman: And we've been watching this closely over the past few months to see if this labor market is coming closer to equilibrium.
• 1:02
  MeganHorneman: What we did see for the month of August was that the job postings were a little bit higher than expected.
• 1:08
  MeganHorneman: And they were actually revised higher in the prior month as well.
• 1:12
  MeganHorneman: But when you look at the number of job postings that are out there in the economy compared to the amount of people that are unemployed, there's actually 157,000 more people unemployed than there are job postings.
• 1:27
  MeganHorneman: And that's the most since April of 2021.
• 1:30
  MeganHorneman: So we've really worked off that COVID, that COVID-related wage pressures, wage dislocations, labor dislocations, where we saw so many employers that were looking for workers.
• 1:42
  MeganHorneman: We've worked that out.
• 1:43
  MeganHorneman: We've gotten now to a better equilibrium.
• 1:45
  MeganHorneman: And when the other the other indicator we look at is the quits rate.
• 1:49
  MeganHorneman: That means the amount of people that are willingly quitting their job because they think that there's better job prospects out there.
• 1:56
  MeganHorneman: We saw that decline again in the month of August.
• 1:59
  MeganHorneman: It's dropped to a year-to-date low at 1.9%.
• 2:02
  MeganHorneman: This is important because if you look at the 20 years leading up to the pandemic, the historical average of this rate is 1.9%.
• 2:12
  MeganHorneman: So all measures of this report are suggesting to us that we're in a much better equilibrium with the labor market.
• 2:20
  MeganHorneman: This should ease up some wage pressures for the Federal Reserve.
• 2:24
  MeganHorneman: Now, this Friday we're scheduled to get the September employment report.
• 2:28
  MeganHorneman: This is barring a government shutdown that might happen this evening.
• 2:31
  MeganHorneman: If that does occur, there could be a delay on some of these economic reports.
• 2:37
  MeganHorneman: But we will be back if we get some of these reports to give you that indication that we're getting on a more real time, especially since it'll be for the month of September.
• 2:47
  MeganHorneman: That's all we have today.
• 2:48
  MeganHorneman: If you want a history of our podcast, you can go to marketswithmegan.fm.
• 2:52
  MeganHorneman: Thank you.