One increasingly popular explanation for America's historically low layoff and unemployment levels? 'Labor hoarding.' The idea is companies have been struggling to rehire workers since the mass firings of 2020, so they're reluctant to let employees go.
"[Companies are] definitely hanging on to workers for dear life just because they're so scarce," Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, told the New York Times, in aThe phenomenon might mean that even as the Federal Reserve increases interest rates to fight inflation and cool the economy — it won't trigger the kind of job loss that happened decades ago when Fed chair Paul Volker used the same playbook and drove unemployment over 10%.
Another sign would be if workers aren't getting as many hours as they want from employers — a signal that companies are hanging on to more folks than they might actually need.there, too, she says, but it's not yet showing up in a government statistic that specifically tracks that measure.Workers aren't as abundant and expendable as they once were, Edwards points out.