The labor market appears to be cooling after years of red-hot heat. Posted wage growth is stabilizing, hiring is slowing down, and salary transparency is increasing. This cooldown may not signal a return to icy conditions, but it could indicate that the recovery’s momentum is running out and that we’re headed into rocky territory.
A cooling job market is impacting sectors that rely on highly skilled workers, such as healthcare and hospitality. However, it’s also helping to level out demand for labor-intensive roles that don’t require advanced degrees. For example, frontline jobs like farmworkers and delivery drivers are growing at a healthy pace alongside care economy roles such as nursing professionals. Education-related jobs including tertiary and higher education teachers are also expected to grow, while technology roles such as AI and machine learning specialists, software developers and fintech engineers feature in the top 20 fastest-growing jobs.
Another trend is the emergence of alternative compensation models such as equity, which offers employees ownership in a company’s success through options such as stock options and restricted share units (RSUs). As companies adopt these new ways to compensate their workforce, they need to be prepared to respond quickly and effectively to employee feedback. And finally, the union movement continues to gain ground, with workers in traditionally “union-proof” sectors like tech and retail organizing their workplaces and forming new unions for the first time in decades.
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