As recession fears grow, strong US hiring is likely slowing

As recession fears grow, strong US hiring is likely slowing

SeattlePI.com

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The American job market has defied raging inflation, rising interest rates, growing recession fears. Month after month, U.S. employers just kept adding hundreds of thousands of workers, often beating forecasters’ expectations.

But now economists worry that signs of weakness are starting to turn up in hiring, threatening one of the United States’ last remaining redoubts of economic strength. Job openings are down, and the number of Americans signing up for unemployment benefits is up.

“When we look across the labor market, we are seeing broad indications of cracks beginning to show,’’ said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “Overall conditions aren’t nearly as strong as what we were seeing three to six months ago.’’

The Labor Department reports on Friday how many jobs were created in July and whether the super-low U.S. unemployment rate has begun to tick higher.

Forecasters, on average, expect the economy to have picked up another 250,000 jobs last month, according to a survey by the data firm FactSet. That would be a solid number in normal times but would mark a big deceleration for 2022: Employers have been hiring an average 457,000 workers a month so far this year.

The unemployment rate is expected to stay at 3.6% — just off a 50-year low — for the fifth straight month.

The job news will have political implications, too: Worries about high prices and the risk of recession are likely to weigh on voters in November’s midterm elections, potentially making it tougher for President Joe Biden’s Democrats to keep control of Congress.

The economic backdrop is troubling: Gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic output — fell in both the first and second quarters; consecutive GDP drops is one definition of a recession. And...

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