Analyzing the Current State of Employment in America with Laura Ullrich

Welcome back to market movers.

The opening bell.

While the US labor market appears to be stabilizing even as the geopolitical situation fractures.

Now for payrolls rebounded last month, adding 178,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate unexpectedly ticked down to 4.3%.

But beneath that headline be heavily driven by healthcare workers returning from strikes.

The foundation does look shaky and joining us.

To dig into the data this morning as well as weigh in on the changing face of the American workforce is Laura Ullrich, Director of Economic Research at Indeed.

Laura, good morning.

Thank you so much for joining us.

So we're keeping an eye on economic data.

So let's start with that headline on foreign payroll number that came in better than expected when you strip out the noise and look at the concentration of growth, which is that number actually tell you.

I'm really happy to be here this morning, um, you know, I wish I could say I thought it really did give us a signal, but I'm not seeing much there and that's simply because it's been so volatile month to month.

If you go back to last since last May, uh, every other month we've had a positive report.

And every other month we've had a report that actually showed negative job growth.

I don't think we're seeing some of those same signals.

178,000 jobs in one month is good, especially considering what breakeven employment, uh, probably is at this point, uh, but, but still not reading too much into it. and Laura, I do want to ask you about a major shift in how we evaluate these numbers.

If we take a look back at 2025, given the partial as well as full government shutdown, the longest in history, we saw delays in data reports.

Immigration changing the demographic map as well as the benchmark for what constitutes a healthy month of job growth that is shifting.

So what is the new break even rate here and how does that actually alter how we should be reading this economic data point going forward.

Absolutely, and this is a great question that economists are trying to answer.

The Dallas Fed and the Saint Louis Fed actually both came out with new estimates last week.

The Dallas Feds was that it might be as high as 30,000 jobs a month, but it might also be as low as 0, or even negative for a couple of months in late 2025.

Uh, this is pretty hard to wrap your brain around when just a year and a half or two years ago.

Even with about 150,000 jobs a month, uh, so moving from that point to 30,000 a month is, is obviously a huge swing.

So how we evaluate these reports going forward it's gonna be quite different.

I mean, we're entering a world where, you know, maybe even a 50,000 or 60,000 additional jobs in a month might be seen as a solid report, whereas in previous years it would have seemed very weak.

And Laura, while I have you here, I do want to ask you about a structural shift that is happening in the background.

So new research from indeed shows that for the first time more jobs are now held by women than men.

So tell us what's driving this massive gender realignment here in the US and how should employers be rethinking their long term planning because of this.

Yeah, absolutely.

So for just the 3rd time ever there are now more women, uh, more jobs are held by women than men in the US economy.

Uh, one thing that's quite different this time is that this hasn't been driven by a recessionary period.

This has been driven more, as you mentioned, by a structural shift.

Really the main culprit are declines in male labor force participation rates.

Female labor force participation has also been declining, but at a lower rate than men, um, and so.

Over time we've just seen this slowly degrade to the point where now there are more jobs held by women.

This has also been bolstered by the fact that a lot of the job growth we have seen in a couple of years has been in the healthcare and social assistance sub-sector, which is about 80% female.

And so there have been, I think, more job opportunities in the economy for women, um, as many of those jobs in healthcare require some sort of certification, some sort of training, and women are typically the ones that hold that.

I think going forward will be very interesting because we'll have to see if this trend lasts.

I believe looking at the data that it will last for now.

I don't see anything that tells me we'll switch back to where um we've been in the past, so moving forward, I think in male dominated sectors it will continue to mean constrained labor supply in some of those spaces, um, and, and also it does you.

You know, it adds all sorts of complications for for how families think about their planning right as we uh as we rely more on female labor, uh, that, that obviously does come at a cost to, to the wages that people earn because women make lower wages on average but also, uh, complicate some, some family dynamics, marriage dynamics, all of those things which we touched on in the piece.

Well, Laura, we will have to leave it there for today, but thank you so much for weighing in on that jobs report, and I appreciate your perspective as well as all of your insights.

Thanks for having me.