October Jobs Report: U.S. Job Growth Expected To Cool

November 3, 2023, 6:30 a.m. ET

Many employers are still struggling to find available workers, but the job market is improving. At the same time, companies are balancing cost concerns – particularly given interest rates remain high – with the need to attract employees.

Overall, fluctuation in the labor market has decreased. The proportion of workers quitting their jobs has been trending downward for 18 months and the layoff rate has remained relatively low.

“We are committed and continuing to hire,” Karen S. Lynch, president and chief executive officer of CVS Health, said in an earnings conference call this week. “It’s a tight labor market, but we’ve had very good success hiring.”

The need for skilled workers remains high.

“Competition for talent, particularly the best talent, remains very, very strong,” Goldman Sachs Chief Executive David Solomon said during its recent conference call. He added that the company received 260,000 applications for 2,600 vacant positions during a recent search at the bank, which has seen several rounds of layoffs this year.

Companies are also increasingly paying attention to their labor and wage costs.

During S&P Global’s recent call with investors and analysts, the company’s chief financial officer, Ewout Steenbergen, said it expects margins to improve starting next quarter, due in part to “strict management of headcount and other expenses.” .

For Meta, which has ended a hiring freeze, a significant portion of the hiring planned for 2023 will now occur in 2024, said Susan Li, the company’s chief financial officer.

And during Southwest Airlines’ most recent earnings call, the airline’s chief financial officer, Tammy Romo, said she expects “increasing headwinds” in 2024, primarily due to higher labor costs.

Amid concerns that labor shortages are leading to a growing mismatch between skills supply and demand, many companies are ramping up their artificial intelligence capabilities.

“We want to make sure we take advantage of this opportunity and make the right level of investment in AI,” said Gary Swidler, chief financial officer of Match Group, the online dating company that owns Tinder, Hinge and other services, during his recent meeting Event results call. “We’re still trying to work out what that means in terms of hiring.”