The American labor market has once again surprised in April with 115,000 additional jobs, following the addition of 185,000 jobs in March, as reported by Forbes. However, the total employment reached 162.6 million, falling for the fourth consecutive month, its longest period of decline since 2009. Additionally, “the percentage of Americans who are working or looking for work has dropped again to 61.8%, its lowest level since 2021.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, the situation is described as strange, with “the labor market unprecedented: unemployment has slightly increased [to 4.3%], layoffs are few, hirings are slow, and the economy needs far fewer new jobs than before.” Economists are struggling to explain the market behavior, as reported by The Washington Post, stating that “for millions of workers, finding a job has become more difficult than at almost any other time in decades.”
A significant challenge is the disappearance of entry-level jobs. An 18-year-old commerce and accounting student, Paula Sales Corpuz, expressed disappointment in never meeting an employer in person during her year and a half of job search, being selected solely through automated video interviews.
Samantha Gilstrap, a 28-year-old journalism graduate, recounted applying to hundreds of jobs after losing her digital reporting job at a Washington television station. In vain, she said, “the only times I was able to interact with humans was through personal connections.” The scarcity of positions and the increase in applicants lead companies to prioritize immediately operational profiles requiring minimal training.
The uncertainty surrounding artificial intelligence explains the slowdown in hiring, with some companies waiting to see how technology evolves and which tasks it will eventually take over. The New York Times highlighted Gloria Caulfield, a real estate development executive, getting booed when she declared at the University of Central Florida on May 8 that “artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.”
A Gallup survey relayed by Axios revealed that last year only 43% of Americans aged 15 to 34 believed it was a good time to find a job, 21 percentage points lower than their counterparts aged 55 and older. Gallup editor Benedict Vigers noted that the greatest drop in optimism comes from young Americans with higher education who are not yet working full-time, suggesting that “it is likely that artificial intelligence is associated with this decline.”
