This Job Market Forecast 2016 can be a helpful predictions guide when navigating uncertain staffing for employers and this will give them options in the future, especially amidst today’s increasingly volatile economic climate.
The main issues that arise in the economy when looking at predictions for this job market forecast 2016 include more businesses folding and less employment availability. Before you lose hope, let’s look at the beneficial alternatives that will arise as a result of the new employment climate.
If the market is falling, then why are there so many contrasting articles in the news today praising a strong labour market and announcing “U.S. jobless claims fall to lowest level in 4 decades“?
These employment reports are somewhat misleading because long-term unemployed workers can’t file a new claim for unemployment after up to 26 weeks and some extensions, which means that many have already run out of benefits. Other news reports such as Bloomberg.com claim that “…the number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits fell…”, portraying a decrease in the collection of jobless benefits as one sign of an improving job market: Yet wouldn’t unemployment cutoff include the long-term unemployed individuals who stopped receiving benefits simply because they ran out? This article and many others like it imply that collecting benefits is tied to a strong labour market, but those who stop collecting benefits aren’t necessarily doing it because they found a job.
Another issue with recent labour reports is that freelance individuals (now 34% of U.S. workers and growing) often aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits, depending on the state they live in and their job classification.* Companies like Uber are increasingly classifying the majority of their workers as independent contractors instead of employees, and this more common type of freelance work renders one ineligible to file for unemployment claims. When articles mention “firings are at historically low levels“, could that sometimes point to the fact that there are less employees to fire? Independent contractors are hired on a day-to-day basis, so they can’t be “fired”; it’s an at-will agreement. Those who are self-employed don’t usually qualify for any unemployment benefits (unless incorporated), so the unemployed self-employed are another class of workers who aren’t taken into consideration when gathering “jobless claims” data. Some reports estimate that the actual unemployment rate is closer to 18 percent.
Maybe unemployment claims are no longer a reliable measure of collecting employment statistics. Perhaps a new system for assessing employment rates is called for when a large percentage of the working population is no longer represented.
Based on currently available data, it’s clear that if jobless claims are low, it isn’t necessarily an indication of a healthy economy. Low jobless claims could be the result of an upsurge in the number of freelance workers without benefits, an escalation of long-term unemployment, or both. Job market statistics that overlook a significant percentage of the working population are incomplete and therefore inaccurate. However, reports about jobless claims like those in the news today seem to affect the stock market and can cause more stocks to fall. The following article in Reuters mentions a connection between jobless claims and further stock market declines. While the Reuters report still omits independent contractors and the self-employed in its study, it does offer more thorough data than many other reports in the form of statistics on long-term unemployment and labor force participation rate: http://www.reuters.com/
Nonetheless, it does look good for Democrats in upcoming elections if it seems that the job market is improving. So even if many of today’s news reports on employment omit important information, someone may be getting benefits tomorrow.
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*It looks like the issue of employees being treated as independent contractors is starting to change: http://www.
