The American job market has once again surprised in April with 115,000 additional jobs, following the addition of 185,000 jobs in March, reports Forbes. However, the total employment has reached 162.6 million, declining for the fourth consecutive month, its longest period of decline since 2009. Additionally, “the percentage of Americans working or seeking employment has dropped again to 61.8%, its lowest level since 2021”.
Atypical job market What’s going on? The Wall Street Journal does not hesitate to describe the situation as strange: “The labor market is unprecedented: unemployment has slightly increased [to 4.3%], layoffs are few, hiring is slow, and the economy needs far fewer new jobs than before”. Economists struggle to explain the behavior of the labor market, as The Washington Post says, “For millions of workers, finding a job has become more difficult than at almost any other time in decades”.
A significant hurdle: entry-level jobs are disappearing. An 18-year-old commerce and accounting student, Paula Sales Corpuz, is dismayed to have never met an employer in person in a year and a half of job searching, being selected only through automated video interviews.
Journalism graduate Samantha Gilstrap, 28, shares her experience of applying for hundreds of jobs after losing her digital reporting job at a Washington television station. In vain. “The only times I could interact with humans were through personal connections,” she says. Faced with the scarcity of positions and the increase in candidates, companies prioritize profiles that are immediately operational and require minimal training.
The AI factor Uncertainty about artificial intelligence notably explains the slowdown in hiring, the title continues: “Instead of rushing to hire new employees, some companies are waiting to see how technology evolves and which tasks it will eventually take over”.
This has led to frustrations. The New York Times highlights that a real estate development sector leader, Gloria Caulfield, was heavily criticized when she declared in front of graduates from the University of Central Florida on May 8 that “artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution”.
A Gallup survey reported by Axios shows that last year only 43% of Americans aged 15 to 34 said it was a good time to find a job, 21 percentage points lower than their counterparts aged 55 and older. A Gallup writer, Benedict Vigers, indicates that the greatest decline in optimism comes from young Americans who have completed higher education and are not yet working full time, and that “it is likely that artificial intelligence is associated with this decline”.
