Yazad Dalal
Hi everyone, I’m Yaza Dalal, Chief Growth Officer here at Joveo and welcome to Recruiting Realities, where we bring to you the latest developments and insights in recruitment. Today we’re speaking about the state of the labor market with our own in-house labor market economist, David Garrett. Hey David.

David
Hey, how’s it going?

Yazad Dalal
Awesome. And for our listeners at Joveo, we publish interactive insights across all major occupations in the U S you can check that out on our website, joveo.com slash interactive hyphen insights. Although the government was reopened last month, it feels like a really long time ago. The Bureau of economic analysis canceled its initial advanced estimate for Q3s GDP and the Bureau of labor statistics delayed its report for November.

which is now set to be released a week from now on December 16th. This means over here at Joveo, we’ll continue to look at reporting from other highly credible private sector resources. We’re looking at ADP, we’re looking at Challenger Christmas, we’re looking at our own data. To give you our own point of view, David, I have lots of questions. Let’s get started. First of all, what do you make of the news that has come out from both of those sources, ADP and Challenger?

David
Yeah, mean, so… Damn. Sorry. Can we… All right, damn it. Can we just…

Yazad Dalal
Keep going, keep going.

David
I lost it.

Yazad Dalal
That’s okay, take a deep breath and we can keep going.

David
Yeah, well, also,

We’ll have to do some cuts, I’m sorry. I also lost my notes for it. Okay. Do you want to just, yeah, cue me in one more time, my bad. Yeah. So yeah, mean, ADP is showing a bit of like a split screen, right? These large companies.

Yazad Dalal
Don’t worry about it.

Yazad Dalal
Take a deep breath and start.

David
added about 90,000 jobs while the small businesses shed around 120,000. The biggest small businesses, this is the biggest small business drop since March of 2023, so COVID era. As far as hiring gains that they’re reporting, there’s education and health, which we’ve consistently seen as this longstanding winner over the last few months, largely due to economic need for these roles.

you know, leisure hospitality, which was up about 13,000, which likely is because of all the Black Friday holiday hiring going on. While, you know, there were major losses in professional business services around 26, 27,000, information, which is tied to the Verizon announcement that you may have seen, and, you manufacturing, construction, financial services, all lost roughly around 9,000.

Meanwhile, Challenger and Grey, Challenger, Grey and Christmas, apologies, reported around 71,000 new layoff announcements in November, which is down from the significant number we saw last month, but brings the 2025 announcements to 1.17 million, which is 54 % higher than last year. know, the large employers, the talent market still remains competitive for them, particularly, obviously, health care.

And, these seasonal roles are carrying along, but even with these losses in white collar industries, I know many of our larger tech clients have continued to receive a significant influx of applications for their roles, likely tied to the layoffs that have been happening there. So, you know, for a general bottom line, the market is clearly very mixed and does kind of show signs of this K-shaped pattern where some are winning, some are losing, that I’ve seen other economists and sort of news sources mention. And the level of uncertainty and caution looking forward is continuing to rise as we see these reports come

Yazad Dalal
Well, I think first of all, case-shaped pattern is a new phrase for me. I’m to have to add that to my list of cool business buzzwords. think looking at Jovio clients, especially in healthcare and seasonal roles, we are definitely still seeing a strong need to keep hiring for them while, of course, at the same time having to do much more with much less. We’re happy to continue partnering with all those companies to help them accomplish their goals.

You had told me offline that there was something interesting about the layoff announcements. I wanted you to just share that for our audience, David.

David
Yeah. So, after kind of reflecting on our last month’s podcast, and also just some commentary and sort of comments I had seen around online and things regarding the sort of the, the challenger gray and Christmas numbers, I felt like it was important to mention that, you know, like these are tracking layoff announcements, not announcements, not necessarily immediate job losses.

I, you know, there are two types, right? There’s, planned cuts, which is, you know, we intend to reduce 20,000 roles over the next five years, one month, two months, whatever, you know, versus, then, you know, this takes the shape of attrition, redeployment, anything like that versus immediate layoffs, which I think is what a lot of people tend to think about, which is, you know, we’re laying off 5,000 and those people are gone today. those types of layoffs are actually.

Yazad Dalal
very rare outside of extreme events or business closures. So right now from the Challenger Gray and Christmas reports, we’ve been seeing a lot more of the first type, falls into the war notice type of, war and act type of layoffs. And not so much the massive number of people have immediately lost their jobs. It’s something I thought was important to sort of.

discussed because it’s a cautionary signal. A lot of people, is not, in my opinion, a good thing to see these layouts either way. But that’s also why there’s not this explosion in the unemployment data as well.

Yazad Dalal
I appreciate that. That’s a big difference between announcing that you’re simply not going to replace folks that leave through natural attrition and retirement. There’s a big difference between that and layoffs. of course, layoffs are hard. All of us have been through that. Of course, our hearts go out to anybody who’s affected in their job. Well, let’s leave it there. First of all, thank you, David. Thank you to our listeners. Enjoy the holiday season. Don’t forget to visit us at joveo.com and we will see you again soon.

David
Take Care.