Coming off the long US Labor Day weekend, perhaps we should talk about … labor.
US employers added 187,000 jobs in August, indicating a still-resilient labor market despite high-interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve. The unemployment rate rose to 3.8%, but for an encouraging reason: more people began looking for work. Wage gains are easing, which may help provide reassurance that inflation pressures are cooling. The Fed hopes to achieve a rare “soft landing,” in which its rate hikes would manage to slow hiring, borrowing, and spending enough to curb inflation without causing a deep recession.
Women have recovered to pre-pandemic employment levels and are now half of the labor force, with prime-age working women leading the recovery. In August, the labor force participation rate for women ages 25 to 54 was 77.6 percent, compared with 77 percent in February 2020, just before the economy crashed. That figure represents the share of women in that population who are working or actively looking for work, and it’s a key metric to assess the economy’s health. It’s also a milestone: Women in that cohort have remained at or above 77.5 percent since April of this year, marking the highest recorded rates in history. There’s also evidence that much of that rebound was driven by women with young children, with the labor force participation rate for women with children under the age of 5 around 70.4 percent — an all-time high, according to a study by think tank the Brookings Institution.
According to CompTIA’s latest monthly Tech Jobs Report, the technology sector added 12,643 workers in August, led by new hiring in IT, custom software services, systems design, cloud infrastructure, data processing, and hosting. However, tech occupations throughout the US economy declined by 189,000 positions, with the unemployment rate for tech occupations rising slightly to 2.1%. Employer job postings for future tech hiring totaled nearly 208,000 in August, with the professional, scientific, and technical services, administrative support, and manufacturing sectors having the largest share of tech job postings.
Why do we care?
I’m feeling “full steam ahead” is the consensus, despite it being a boring headline. Do more with less will be a theme for customers – they will struggle to find staff in much the same way you will, so lean into that positioning.
I’m encouraged by the numbers around women in the workforce – and want to keep in mind the additional demographics. Women with young children – now, pause and consider if you have positioned to be attractive to this demographic. If you haven’t already considered this demographic, now’s the time. Could your services support more flexible work environments that are attractive to this workforce segment? Think about childcare support, staggered hours, or even providing tech solutions that make remote working more feasible and productive.
I’ll get into remote work… next.