US job market records solid growth for third consecutive month
The US economy recorded solid employment growth in May for the third consecutive month.
Major U.S. employers announced their smallest layoffs so far this year in May, following the strong payroll numbers announced by the government on June 5th.
USA TODAY tracked just 250 mass layoff notices in May, affecting 32,000 workers. This included Spirit Airlines’ 11 layoff filings reported in multiple states in May, affecting approximately 7,000 employees. The airline announced its closure in early May, suspending all flights.
Meanwhile, U.S. employers added 172,000 jobs in May, and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, according to the latest numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The agency also revised employment statistics for the previous month. Employment numbers increased in both March and April compared to the initial numbers.
Layoff records tracked through Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) applications collected by USA TODAY have shown a downward trend since January, when more than 400 notices totaled more than 40,000 layoffs. These filings represent announcements of job cuts by companies with at least 100 employees.
According to our tracking database, these companies announced nearly 2,000 layoffs in the first five months of this year, affecting more than 166,000 employees. This represents a decrease of approximately 13% in the number of reported layoffs compared to the same period last year.
“Right now, the labor market is precariously stable,” said Cory Stahl, senior economist at Indeed. “It’s stable in the sense that we’ve reached some kind of balance point, but it’s not clear whether that balance point is actually a tipping point.”
Stahle said the current “pretty good” job market is juxtaposed with underlying risks and uncertainties, including the ongoing war in Iran and rising energy and gas prices.
And disparities exist in today’s labor market, he said, with workers who are already employed and in growth sectors finding work relatively easily, while unemployed workers and workers outside of fast-growth industries struggle to find work.
The number of long-term unemployed Americans is increasing, even as the market sees faster-than-expected job growth, the latest federal statistics show.
Why do we collect alert notifications?
The WARN Act, passed in 1988, requires employers with 100 or more full-time workers to give at least 60 days’ notice before mass layoffs or plant closures. The law is intended to give workers time to start looking for new jobs in case they lose their jobs.
USA TODAY collects WARN applications from 43 state labor departments and the District of Columbia to track layoffs at major companies across the country. The database includes notices dating back to the 1990s and allows readers to search by state, company, and year.
Seven states, including Arkansas, Hawaii, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming, either do not provide public data access or have incompatible data formats.
WARN reporting systems vary by state, so reports may be filed weeks after layoffs are announced, and companies may amend or withdraw their notices. Therefore, the totals in the tracker can change as new records are updated.
Still, experts say WARN notices are a leading indicator of large-scale layoffs, providing an early estimate of the timing and size of layoffs that may not take effect for up to two months after they are announced.
“It’s more important than ever to pay attention to what’s going on with these warning notices,” Staehle said, because a significant increase in the number of layoffs could quickly offset the increase in employment.
California continues to lead the nation in the number of layoffs recorded in WARN filings, followed by Washington and Texas.
