CHART OF THE DAY: This labor market data point just hit a 44-year low (and low is good)
SteveIt feels like its been awhile since I have busted out a new Chart of the Day post so what better to dust off the fan favorite feature than another look at one of my pet subjects, namely, the US labor market.
While I have posted a ton of labor market charts over the years, I am pretty sure I have not talked about today's data point - Weekly Initial Jobless Claims. This data point is the total number of people making new claims for unemployment assistance for the weekly measurement period. And as you can surmise from the definition, lower is better with this metric. The fewer folks making unemployment claims the better.
So here's the data, initial weekly jobless claims for the last 10 years or so, courtesy of our pals at the St. Louis Federal Reserve, then some comments from me after that. As always, my comments are absolutely free of charge but sadly, are non-guaranteed.
The data please...
Three quick thoughts about the data...
1. The number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time totaled 222,000, the lowest since March 31, 1973. That's a long time ago. So long ago that the Knicks were about to win the NBA title in a few weeks.
Lower initial claims leads to lower (over time) unemployment rates, fewer people truly out of work, and the need for HR and recruiting to essentially have to make two arguments when attempting to fill open roles. One, that the role itself presents the candidate great opportunity and value. And two, that the new opportunity and value somehow are better, more compelling than their current set up. Fewer and fewer of your candidates and prospects are going to be desperately seeking something new. You job continues to get harder.
2. I know you, or more likely your CFO, won't want to hear this. But if you have persistently hard or long to fill roles you are working on, you have to sweeten your offering. And for the most part that means compensation. Fewer unemployed folks, more candidates already not sure they want to leave the good thing they have, and like the real estate market in San Francisco, potentially juggling multiple good offers. All that adds up to you left with empty chairs if you can't/won't compete on compensation.
3. In a tightening labor market you know what else becomes important? Yep, retention. At the same time you are scouring LinkedIn profiles of people working at your competitors to see who you can poach, their recruiters are doing the same with your folks. What can/are you doing to strengthen your own value prop to try and build a moat around your best people? Because with each passing week, it is going to get harder and tougher to fill the spots of the faithful departed.
When talent gets scarce, and their options multiply, the HR/recruiter role becomes that much more important in the organization.
In fact, you might be getting offers yourself right now.
Because in a really tight, competitive market the only thing that might be more valuable than talent to the organization are talented HR and recruiting people.
Happy hunting.
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Labor Market data is based on employment, unemployment, inactivity, working time, temporary employment, labor market transitions, etc. We don't know how these points are calculated so we can't say much more about these analytics.
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