A new report from the Labor Department confirms troubling trends underlying the labor market, with a decline in the number of people hired to start a new job in April.
The headline report from the Labor Department on the health of the U.S. economyshowed deterioration in April and May, with the monthly pace of job growth slowing to just 123,000 in April and 38,000 last month. Those figures are the net change in the total number of jobs. Today, the Labor Department follows up that report with a look at the labor market’s churn — the millions of people each month that quit or lose one job, or start a new one, each month. In general, during times of economic health, the labor market is characterized by rising levels of job turnover, as many people quit jobs to take better jobs.
The number of people hired in April fell to 5.1 million, down from 5.3 million in March and 5.5 million in February. That works out to a hiring rate of 3.5%, the slowest pace since August of 2014. While the hiring rate has improved since the worst periods of 2009 and 2010, employers have yet to return to hiring at the pace they did a decade ago.
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