What about the youth unemployment rate, the rising and rising youth unemployment? Are you concerned about that?

So the unemployment rate is exactly where it was when President Trump first took office in his first term.

And he has a track record of bringing it all the way down to 3.5%.

We have a bigger challenge this time because of the Biden inflation hangover, which forced the Fed to slam the brakes on the economy.

And that has hurt marginal workers the most.

But we are setting the stage for a huge comeback in 2026 and beyond with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which has hugely stimulative policies.

And you'll see those macro stimulative effects build into 2026.

I'm just curious how then you factor that into your estimates for the impact on the U.S. labor market.

julia pollock chief economist at zip recruiter joins us julia talk to us about how you're looking at the labor market here in the us has it changed over the last several months

Yes, but it hasn't changed along the margin that people were most worried about.

So we haven't really seen layoffs tick up.

Initial claims have been remarkably stable, even in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland, the areas where federal workers are most heavily concentrated.

we haven't seen the impact of public layoffs on the rest of the economy yet uh the unemployment rate seems like it's pretty stable too and um there are a couple of reasons for that one is that many of these workers are still on administrative leave they're still on payrolls the other What we're seeing at ZipRecruiter is that when these federal workers, even the ones who haven't been cut yet, just those who anticipate possibly being cut in the future, go out and look for jobs, they're actually faring better than the rest of the workforce.

So among those government workers who were just hired by a new job in the last few months, 76% said that job search went well compared to 60% of the workforce overall.

And among those who are still searching, 32% say that job search is going well.

Is that justified from what you see?

Julia, what is the ZipRecruiter Job Seeker Confidence Index and what is it telling you now?

So we measure job seeker confidence using a battery of 10 confidence questions, and then we also ask job seekers, you know, every quarter about everything else that involve... that, that, uh, job search entails and, and how they're experiencing the labor market, what they expected to get, what they're actually finding.

Uh, job seeker confidence is almost back at some of the lowest we've ever, uh, measured.

Uh, all of the soft data has, has gone south recently.

There was a brief surge of optimism in the fourth quarter, but the first-quarter data is fairly weak.

Uh, there's a tremendous amount of anxiety because there is just so much uncertainty in this economy.

And then of course, you know, the labor market has slowed over, over two years.

Um, is, is that justified from what you see?

in the fourth

quarter.

Our first quarter surveys of 2025 are now wrapping up.

And what we're finding is that that bump has disappeared.

Job seekers are saying that in the largest numbers ever, that their job search is going poorly.

We have the largest share of job seekers ever with zero offers.

Job seekers have lost confidence that there are plenty of jobs available.

When is the when of, say, 4.8% unemployment? Is the when of that this year, or do you go out further into next year?

It's a perfect time, that if you're out of a job, where do you go? And you go to ZipRecruiter, their chief economist, one of our favorites. Juliet Pollak joins us right now. Juliet, ZipRecruiter, have you seen a change? Can you give us wisdom or perspective on this new job market with so many people so quickly out of work?

It is a slow job market. That is what I'll say about that. Um, the, well, there was a big pop in optimism in the fourth quarter. Our first quarter surveys of 2025 are now wrapping up, and what we're finding is that that bump has disappeared. Uh, job seekers are saying that, uh, you know, in the largest numbers ever that their job search is going poorly. Uh, we have the largest share of job seekers ever with zero offers. Uh, job seekers have lost confidence that there are plenty of jobs available. So, we have the, the largest share of job seekers ever, over 40% saying that they have, that they're not confident at all that there are jobs available. So, our first quarter survey is, is a somewhat gloomy one, I'd have to say.

Um, uh, Bloomberg Surveillance folks, they commute across the nation from Julia Pollack's left coast over here to 99.1 FM in Washington, 92.9 FM up in Boston. Good morning. Bloomberg 11:30 on a cold spring morning here, uh, in New York. On YouTube, subscribe to Bloomberg Podcasts. It's our new way to discover us. Uh, find that again at YouTube. Thank you for Google and YouTube for their, uh, support. Julia, when... You just give me the litany of how difficult it is to get a job. Your job at ZipRecruiter is to pull that over to the unemployment rate. We're having a raging debate. When is the when of, say, 4.8% unemployment? Is the when of that this year or do you go out further into next year?

So, it's quite possible we won't get there, and that's because we are in the middle of peak 65 with the, uh, with, with the largest numbers of Americans turning 65 every year. We've got about five years of boo- baby boomers aging out like this and, uh, becoming eligible for Medicare and for retirement. Uh, and then we also have immigration falling steeply. It's one of the first things the president did, was sign an executive order ending asylum programs for workers from Afghanistan, uh, you know, Nicaragua, Haiti, uh, um... So, those programs together accounted for about 500,000 immigrant inflows a year, and many of those workers got, uh, employment visas right away. That stopped right away. Other kinds of, of border crossings have stopped. And so the number of, of, uh, people who need to be absorbed by this labor market keeps falling. And so perhaps even with slow hiring, we won't-

Do you agree?

I think it's too soon to tell.

So on the one hand, you have consumer confidence falling.

There's so many new things happening.

We know that uncertainty can be a drag on investment and hiring as companies wait for clarity.

So it's possible that that is happening.

We also know that some specific companies are concerned about tariffs and the effect on their businesses.

drives just stepping back here from a corporation what drives my hiring strategy on a kind of a six to 12 month basis

Do you at ZipRecruiter advise people to go into computer science type programs now? What do you see at ZipRecruiter?

That is a great question.

So tech was the place to be in 2015 to 2019. huge job growth, wage growth, and as a result, people responded to those market signals.

Government, economics, those were some of the big concentrations when I was a student in college.

Now, overwhelmingly, computer science is the biggest major at top schools.

And those students are struggling.

Tech has not just stayed flat the last two years, it has lost jobs for two years.

Bloom, the big scholar of remote work.

As we look at some of the plans in this administration to reduce the government workforce, including reports that about 40,000 government workers have taken buyouts, how does that impact how we look at the jobs report and the impact, again, that it has on the markets and on the Fed?

Well, most of that government hiring was actually at the state and local level, and most of it was driven by the pandemic-induced population shifts to the Sunbelt states, to the mountain states.

It was hiring of police officers and teachers in Nevada and Arizona and Texas, the places where people moved.

And so that was faster than usual, but it was really delayed catch up after the pandemic because the private sector raised wages and competed for workers and out-competed the public sector for a long time until the public sector took much longer to adjust.

That should normalize at some point and ease a bit.

Healthcare hiring remains very, very strong.

That was the number one driver of job gains last year.

Is that something we should be paying attention to? Is this something that's giving us some indication of the direction of this job market?