For it seems like forever everywhere,
right? You'd see this right here.
The help wanted signs all over
the place. But finally, since the
pandemic started for the first
time, we're getting a new report
saying more of those help wanted
signs are coming down. I'm Ben Briscoe
and I'm Tanya Rivera.
From now until 6:00 o'clock.
We're digging into where
the job market stands now,
how it could make inflation.
Worse, and hey,
you know whatever happened for
that push of getting $15.00
an hour for minimum wage?
Let's start with the proof that it's
actually getting easier to find workers.
These are all of her frozen items.
Amanda Nawin is cofounder of the
startup food delivery service, pastel.
She says finding workers has
been a struggle. Last year
we posted a job opening and we got
zero people, but that changed when
she recently posted new position.
People are starting to actually
write in about job openings.
A new report from the Labor
Department shows there are 11.3.
Billion job openings down slightly from the
previous month but still near record levels.
It is true that job openings fell on this
latest snapshot, but the key is of the
job market remains remarkably stable.
Mark Hamrick is the senior
economic analyst at bankrate.com.
The new data shows demand for professional
workers dropped a little but many
other industries continue to ramp up.
Hiring more than eleven million
job openings in this country.
As of last count, there were only
6 million officially unemployed.
There are less jobs to be
filled than in months past.
Things are slowly but surely
kind of turning around,
but there are still labor shortages,
So what will get even
more people back to work?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell said this week.
That and this is his quote.
You've got a whole lot of people
sitting on the sidelines because,
frankly, they're flushed for the
moment once they run out of money,
they'll start concluding it's better
to work than to not work. Now.
There might be something to that argument.
Research shows during the pandemic
a lot of people were not going out.
They were not traveling,
so they were able to save money
at faster rates than ever before.
Economists say those savings are
slowly being chipped away by inflation.
Moody's Analytics looked at the
savings peak in December of 2021.
Apparently Americans had $2.7
trillion socked away.
That's a 40 year high, but by May,
that was down to 2.5 trillion.
Economists also argue that
more people are working because
employers are starting to pay more.
Take teachers for example.
Guilford County recently ran Facebook ads,
saying new teachers could get a $10,000
signing bonus and the state budget
passed by the General Assembly gives
more than a 4% raise for teachers.
Moody says that workers in low
wage industries like hospitality,
retail,
healthcare have actually seen
their wages rise faster than
inflation across the country.
Now,
in part because some places like LA have
raised their minimum wage post pandemic,
it's now 16.
Dollars an hour there.
LA's really expensive city to live
in and we totally understand where
the employees are coming from, so.
You know I need if I want to help
out my employees as much as I
can need to take care of them.
They're running the business.
They're the main, you know,
workers behind the the restaurant,
and if it wasn't for them,
we wouldn't be.
All right, so LA raised their minimum wage,
but there has been a bunch of
talk about raising the national
minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Here's where that idea stands.
Federal workers and contractors
began earning $15.00 an hour at the
beginning of earlier this year.
President Joe Biden said in part,
a job is about more than a paycheck.
It's about dignity.
When I was running for President,
I said it was past time to increase the
federal minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.
He called the federal worker
raise a down payment on that.
Pledge here in North Carolina.
Workers make a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
The state has not passed any
laws to increase that wage,
which was established back in 2009.
Now, while the number of
job openings is going down,
there is still a huge amount of people
quitting their current positions.
The new Labor Department report says a
near record 4.3 million people quit in May.
Many leaving their job for a better one.
People tend to quit jobs.
When they have a high degree of confidence
about their ability to get a job.
So if you're one of those people thinking
of quitting your job for a better job,
career counselors say there
are some important points that
you need to consider first.
There are of course common
sense moves you should make,
like giving your boss at
least two weeks notice.
The last thing you want to do
is leave money on the table,
so here are some other things
you may want to consider before
heading off to other pastures,
experts say in support to check
out all the retirement plan of
the company that you're leaving.
If you leave before you're
fully vested in the plan,
it could really cost you.
May not be fully invested in the
matching contributions as well
as the earnings associated with
those matching contributions,
so I want to make sure that I
understand where I am invested.
You want to ask about vacation,
overtime, sick pay that you
may have accrued and then,
of course, there's insurance.
If you paid into a flexible
spending account, Palmer says,
that will not follow you to another job.
I want to make sure that I use
that money before I leave,
so maybe it's a new eyeglasses and
dental checkup. Braces for the kid.
When you also want to leave on
friendly terms, a well written
resignation letter can help with that.
Experts say it's important to do all you can,
not to burn any bridges. Better pay.
Better jobs are helping people,
whether inflation and buying
isn't slowing down too much.
But right now things are more or less OK.
Most people are working
the unemployment rate,
which is something lots of people
do pay attention to is very low.
It's 3.6% and not only are most
people in the United States working,
many people are seeing wages rise.
But economists say if we all
keep spending at the same rates,
inflation is not going to go back down.
It's going to take slowing our
spending habits to decrease demand.
That is kind of a very tightrope
walk because slowing too much
could then cause a recession.
If people look out into the future
and believe that prices aren't
going to normalize to some extent,
they may in fact be more inclined
to pull back on spending.
So you want to pull back
or cooling in the economy,
which is what the Fed is trying to engineer.
But again, because the economy is
so reliant on consumer spending,
you need people to get out
and actually spend.
And if they don't,
then we're talking about layoffs.
And then we're talking about a lot of
retrenchment in the economy that does.
Again, the you leave from the fear
to the reality of a recession.
So there's like that sweet spot
that we all don't know where it
is serious sweet spot out there.
The bottom line,
experts see things getting better.
People are going back to
work despite the prices.
But there is a push through account,
of course, that recession.
If it comes to that, yeah,
and hopefully we won't get to that
and we will find the sweet spot.