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    U.S. jobs report shows a gain of 528,000 in July.

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    U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department said on Friday, again outstripping expectations for a labor market that is still rebounding from the pandemic but that has come under increasing pressure from inflation as well as from escalating interest rates meant to rein in prices.The impressive performance — which brings the total employment back to its level of February 2020, just before the pandemic lockdowns — indicates that a slowdown in some industries has not been enough to drag down overall hiring. And it provides new evidence that the United States has not entered a recession.But most forecasters expect that momentum to slow markedly later in the year, as companies cut payrolls to match lower demand.“At this stage, things are OK,” said James Knightley, the chief international economist at the bank ING. “Say, December or the early part of next year, that’s where we could see much softer numbers.”The unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, down from 3.6 percent in June, matching its 50-year low on the eve of the pandemic.Last week, the government reported that the nation’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, had contracted for the second consecutive quarter when adjusted for inflation. The data showed a sharp decline in home building, a slackening of business investment and a sluggish rise in consumer spending.Those trends are bound to affect the labor market overall, even if not uniformly or immediately.Amy Glaser, a senior vice president at the global staffing agency Adecco, said her firm was still struggling to fill hourly jobs, especially in retail and logistics. Employers may not have made those positions attractive enough, and, increasingly, may do without them.“I think we do have a gap in the jobs that are available and the desire to do those jobs,” Ms. Glaser said. “We know there are tens of thousands of warehouse jobs out there, but standing on your feet for 10 hours a day isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.” More

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    Gloomy about the economy and inflation, Americans remain upbeat about jobs.

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    Americans are worried about inflation, pessimistic about the economy overall and upset about the way their leaders are handling it. But they still feel pretty good about the job market.Fifty-two percent of Americans say it is a good time to find a job right now, compared with just 11 percent who say it is a bad time, according to a survey conducted last month for The New York Times by the online research firm Momentive. (The rest say the situation is “mixed,” or didn’t answer the question.) Fifty-six percent say the job market is more favorable to employees than employers, and a majority think that these conditions will continue for at least six months.Most Americans are not worried, either, that their jobs are in jeopardy. Forty-four percent of those surveyed said they were concerned that they or a member of their household would be laid off in the next few months, up only modestly from 37 percent just before the pandemic.“People see the job market as still a little bit of a bright spot,” said Brianna Richardson, a research scientist for Momentive.The rosy outlook on jobs is a striking contrast to Americans’ views of the economy writ large. More than 90 percent of people in the survey said they were concerned about inflation, and a majority said they were worse off financially than a year earlier. Only 17 percent said overall business conditions in the country were somewhat or very good.Ms. Richardson said the results suggested that bad news on inflation was eclipsing good news on jobs in Americans’ perceptions of the economy. That appears to be true for people’s own finances as well: Even though they see it as an employee-friendly job market, most workers say they haven’t gotten raises that keep up with rising prices.Americans take a dim view of the way the White House and the Federal Reserve have handled inflation, although the survey was conducted before Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia signed on to a bill that Democrats say would help reduce inflation. But those polled don’t necessarily think Republicans would do better. Forty-four percent of respondents said they thought Democrats would do a better job with the economy, versus 47 percent who preferred Republicans on the issue. Those numbers were little changed from the last time the question was asked, in May 2019.About the survey: The data in this article came from an online survey of 5,881 adults conducted by the polling firm Momentive from July 18 to July 25. The company selected respondents at random from the more than two million people who take surveys on its platform each day. Responses were weighted to match the demographic profile of the population of the United States. The survey has a modeled error estimate (similar to a margin of error in a standard telephone poll) of plus or minus two percentage points, so differences of less than that amount are statistically insignificant. More

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    Job Openings Fell in June, Suggesting That the Labor Market Is Cooling

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    The number of job openings fell for the third consecutive month in June, a sign that the red-hot U.S. labor market may be starting to cool off.Employers posted 10.7 million vacant positions on the last day of June, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That is high by historical standards but a sharp drop from the 11.3 million openings in May and the record 11.9 million in March. It was the largest one-month decline in the two decades that the government has kept track of this data, other than the two months at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.Job openings are falling, but remain highMonthly U.S. job openings, seasonally adjusted

    Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesThe drop was concentrated in retail, the latest sign that the sector is struggling as consumers shift their spending from goods back to services as the pandemic ebbs. But job postings have also fallen in leisure and hospitality, the sector that was the most strained by labor shortages last year.The job market remains strong by most measures. There were still nearly twice as many job openings as unemployed workers in June, and employers are raising pay and offering other incentives to attract and retain staff. Layoffs remained near a record low in June, suggesting that employers were reluctant to part with staff they worked so hard to hire. And the number of workers voluntarily quitting their jobs remains high, although it has fallen from last year’s peak.The recent decline in openings is likely to be encouraging news for policymakers at the Federal Reserve, who have been trying to slow down the economy in an effort to tame inflation. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, and other officials have pointed to the number of vacant jobs as evidence that the labor market is too hot. They are hoping that employers will start posting fewer jobs and hiring fewer workers before they begin laying people off, allowing the job market to cool down without causing a spike in unemployment.Still, any slowdown in the job market will mean that workers have less leverage to demand raises when pay is already failing to keep up with inflation. Slower wage growth, in turn, could lead consumers to spend less, increasing the risk that the United States could slip into a recession.The labor market “is definitely losing momentum, and that’s what is chipping away at people’s ability to spend,” said Tim Quinlan, a senior economist for Wells Fargo.Economists and policymakers will get a more up-to-date picture of the job market on Friday, when the Labor Department releases data on hiring and unemployment in July. Forecasters surveyed by FactSet expect the report to show that employers added about 250,000 jobs last month, down from 372,000 in June. More

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    U.S. Economy Added 372,000 Jobs in June, Defying Slowdown Fears

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    The strong Labor Department report comes as consumers and businesses express increasing concern about a downturn.The U.S. economy powered through June with broad-based hiring on par with recent months, keeping the country clear of recession territory even as inflation eats into wages and interest rates continue to rise. Employers added 372,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday, and the unemployment rate, at 3.6 percent, was unchanged from May and near a 50-year low. Washington and Wall Street had keenly awaited the new data after a series of weaker economic indicators. The June job growth exceeded economists’ forecasts by roughly 100,000, offering some reassurance that a sharper downturn isn’t underway — at least not yet. But the strength of the report, which also showed bigger wage gains than expected, could give the Federal Reserve more leeway for tough medicine to beat back inflation. Now, all eyes will be watching whether the Fed’s strategy of raising interest rates pushes the country into a recession that inflicts harsh pain. Employment growth over the last three months averaged 375,000, a solid showing though a drop from a monthly pace of 539,000 in the first quarter of this year. Employers have continued to hang on to workers in recent months, with initial unemployment claims rising only slightly from their low point in March.The private sector has now regained its prepandemic employment level — an achievement trumpeted by the White House on Friday — though the level is still below what would have been expected absent the pandemic. Other than the public sector, no broad industry lost jobs in June, on a seasonally adjusted basis.“We’ve essentially ground our way back to where we were pre-Covid,” said Christian Lundblad, a professor of finance at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. “So, this doesn’t necessarily look like a dire situation, despite the fact that we’re struggling with inflation and economic declines in some other dimensions.”Strong demand for workers is also evident in the 11.3 million jobs that employers had open in May, a number that remains close to record highs and leaves nearly two jobs available for every person looking for work. In this equation, any workers laid off as certain sectors come under strain are more likely to find new jobs quickly. The Labor Department’s broadest measure of labor force underutilization — which includes part-time workers who want more hours and people who have been discouraged from job hunting — sank to its lowest rate since the household survey took its current form in 1994, a sign that employers are maximizing their existing work force as hiring remains difficult. The education and health sector gained the most jobs in June.Change in jobs, by sector More

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    Private-sector employment has recovered to prepandemic levels.

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    Job growth in June was driven by industries recuperating from pandemic-induced losses, and continued business investment in sectors still benefiting from formidable demand for their goods and services, even as borrowing costs increase.Employment is now just a touch away from prepandemic levels, down 524,000, or 0.3 percent, from February 2020. A recovery in private-sector job creation is responsible for the overall gains. Government employment has lagged, with a shortfall of 664,000. Job growth in educational services was solid, seasonally adjusted, suggesting that employment in that sector fell less than usual at the start of summer.A recent wave of layoffs in the tech and housing sectors have made headlines, yet employment in professional and business services is 880,000 above its February 2020 level, and overall hiring last month showed no sign of slowing.“High inflation and a shift of consumer spending from goods to services is causing job losses in some sectors of the economy, but most workers who are losing jobs are finding new ones quickly,” said Bill Adams, the chief economist for Comerica Bank, a large commercial bank based in Dallas.With the large baby boomer population continuing to age, demand for health care workers is growing and the sector added 57,000 jobs in June, leaving it 1.1 percent below its prepandemic levels.There was also a significant pickup in jobs at child care centers, good news for a sector that has faced a particular labor shortage. Though labor force participation in the economy overall was mostly flat compared with May.Leisure and hospitality businesses, which are benefiting from an early summer surge in travel, dining and entertainment, added 67,000 jobs, including 41,000 in food services and drinking places — a welcome boost to the sector, which is still 1.3 million jobs short of its prepandemic employment level. More

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    Job Openings Eased, in a Sign of the Cooling Labor Market

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    Employers became slightly less desperate for workers in May as job openings declined for the second straight month from a record high in March.The number of open positions fell to 11.3 million, down from an upwardly revised 11.6 million in April, the Labor Department said Wednesday in the monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. That still leaves nearly two jobs available for every unemployed person in the United States.The job openings rate jumped in retail, hotels and restaurants as Americans returned to summer leisure spending and employers struggled to keep up.By most indications, the labor market has remained very strong, with initial claims for unemployment insurance only inching up in recent months. In the May survey, the share of the work force quitting jobs remained steady, as did the share who were laid off.Concern over finding enough qualified workers increased among business leaders in the second quarter of the year, according to a survey of chief financial officers by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.“The labor shortage is absolutely top of mind for every industry I talk to,” said Dave Gilbertson, vice president of UKG, the payroll and shift management software company, which monitors four million hourly workers. “Every single one of them is struggling to hire. So far I haven’t seen job openings come down. A lot of those jobs have been open for a long time.”The Federal Reserve has been trying to stem inflation by using interest rates to slow down business activity just enough that the shortfall of workers becomes less of a constraint on productive capacity, but without throwing large numbers of people out of work. The gradual decrease in job openings, while layoffs remain low, is evidence that its strategy may be working. More

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    Mark Zuckerberg Prepares Meta Employees for a Tougher 2022

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    In an internal meeting this week, Mr. Zuckerberg said the tech giant was facing one of the “worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history.”SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg has a message for Meta employees: Buckle up for tough times ahead.At an internal meeting on Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said the Silicon Valley company was facing one of the “worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” according to copies of his comments that were shared with The New York Times. He told Meta’s 77,800 workers that they should prepare to do more work with fewer resources and that their performances would be graded more intensely than previously.Mr. Zuckerberg added that the company — which owns Facebook, Instagram and other apps — was lowering its hiring targets. Meta now plans to bring on 6,000 to 7,000 new engineers this year, down from a previous goal of around 10,000, he said. In some areas, hiring will pause entirely, especially of junior engineers, though the head count will increase in other parts of the business, he said.“I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me,” Mr. Zuckerberg said on the call. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.”The C.E.O.’s comments, which were some of the most sharply worded ones he has made to employees, reflect the degree of difficulty that Meta is facing with its business. The company, which for years went from strength to strength financially, has been in an unfamiliar position this year as it has struggled. While it enjoyed strong growth in the early parts of the pandemic, it has more recently grappled with upheaval in the global economy as inflation and interest rates rise.That economic uncertainty is hitting as Meta navigates tumult in its core social networking and advertising business. Mr. Zuckerberg declared last year that his company, which was renamed Meta from Facebook, was making a long-term bet to build the immersive world of the so-called metaverse. He has been spending billions of dollars on the effort, which has dragged down Meta’s profits.The company is also dealing with a blow to its advertising business after Apple made privacy changes to its mobile operating system that limit the amount of data that Facebook and Instagram can collect on its users.As a result, Meta has posted back-to-back profit declines this year, the first time that has happened in over a decade. In February, after a dismal financial report, Meta’s stock plummeted 26 percent and its market value plunged more than $230 billion in what was the company’s biggest one-day wipeout. In March, the company told employees that it was cutting back or eliminating free services like laundry and dry cleaning.In a memo to employees on Thursday, Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, echoed Mr. Zuckerberg’s sentiments and said the company was in “serious times” and that economic “headwinds are fierce,” according to a copy of the memo that was read to The Times.“We need to execute flawlessly in an environment of slower growth, where teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets,” Mr. Cox’s memo said. “We must prioritize more ruthlessly, be thoughtful about measuring and understanding what drives impact, invest in developer efficiency and velocity inside the company, and operate leaner, meaner, better executing teams.”Mr. Zuckerberg’s and Mr. Cox’s comments to employees were reported earlier by Reuters. A Meta spokesman said that Mr. Cox’s memo echoed what the company has said publicly in earnings calls and that it was being frank about its “challenges” and “opportunities.”In the internal meeting on Thursday, which was held via videoconference, Mr. Zuckerberg’s comments appeared to come out of a sense of frustration, according to one employee who watched the call. After someone asked whether the company would continue having “Meta Days” in 2022, an internal name for paid-time-off holidays, Mr. Zuckerberg paused and mulled aloud about how to answer the question appropriately, said the employee, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak.The C.E.O. then said the company needed to crack down and work harder than it had before, “turning up the heat” on internal goals and metrics used to rate employees’ performance. He said he expected some degree of turnover from employees who were not meeting those goals and that some might leave as a result of the intensified pace.But Mr. Zuckerberg noted that he was not averse to spending heavily on projects that matter for the long term and was not focused solely on profits. He cited the efforts on building the metaverse with virtual and augmented reality products over the next 10-plus years.Mr. Cox in his memo also said that Meta was continuing to focus on investing in Reels — the TikTok-like video product featured heavily in Instagram — as well as improving artificial intelligence to help drive the discovery of popular posts across Facebook and Instagram. Meta is also working on making money from its messaging apps and looking to more opportunities in e-commerce sales across the platform, he said.Internal recruiters at Meta said that after a surge of new hires during the pandemic, the company’s recruiting slowed this year. The company was mostly hiring for vital positions, and many roles were being filled internally, said two recruiters who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.There are no current plans to lay people off, two people with knowledge of the company’s plans said, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak. In chat room channels that accompanied the live broadcast of the employee meeting, some workers said they were celebrating cutting the “dead weight” after feeling that the “bar was lowered” for hiring over the course of the pandemic, according to comments that were described to The Times by one of the employees. More

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    Ford Plans 6,000 New Union Jobs in Three Midwestern States

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    Ford Motor said on Thursday that it was planning to invest $3.7 billion in facilities across the Midwest, much of it for the production of electric vehicles, which the company said would create more than 6,000 union jobs in the region.“We’re investing in American jobs and our employees to build a new generation of incredible Ford vehicles,” Jim Farley, the company’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. “Transforming our company for the next era of American manufacturing requires new ways of working.”The announcement, made jointly with the United Automobile Workers union, detailed investments in three states. Ford said it would invest $2 billion and create about 3,200 union jobs in Michigan, including many tied to production of the new F-150 Lightning pickup truck, the company’s highest-profile and most important bet on electric vehicles.In Ohio, Ford will spend over $1.5 billion and create nearly 2,000 union jobs, primarily to build commercial electric vehicles in the middle of this decade. The company also said it would add over 1,000 union jobs at an assembly plant in Kansas City, Mo., that will produce commercial vans, some gas-powered and some electric.The company had indicated that some of the investments would be coming, like the expansion of production capacity for the F-150 in Michigan, but had not detailed the magnitude.The moves follow Ford’s announcement last year that it would build four factories in Kentucky and Tennessee — three battery factories for electric vehicles and a truck assembly plant — irking union officials and elected leaders in Midwestern states, who worry about losing manufacturing jobs to the South.In addition to the new Midwestern jobs, Ford said it would convert nearly 3,000 temporary jobs into permanent full-time positions before the date that its contract with the U.A.W. calls for — which is after two years of employment.“We are always advocating to employers and legislators that union jobs are worth the investment,” the U.A.W. president, Ray Curry, said in a statement. “Ford stepped up to the plate by adding these jobs and converting 3,000 U.A.W. members to permanent, full-time status with benefits.”Assembling the F-150 Lightning at the Dearborn Truck Plant. Ford will add about 3,200 jobs in Michigan, many tied to the electric truck’s production.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesSam Abuelsamid, an auto industry analyst at Guidehouse Insights, said the changes were important as a way to help Ford attract and retain labor in a tight job market, while potentially helping the company avoid costly labor unrest during negotiations over a contract that expires next year as it spends billions on the transition to electric vehicles. A six-week strike by workers at General Motors in 2019 cost that company billions of dollars.“I’m sure one thing Ford would absolutely love to avoid is the potential for a strike,” Mr. Abuelsamid said. “Keeping a positive relationship with the U.A.W. now is to their benefit.”But the investments appear unlikely to substantially diminish the broader threat that the shift toward electric vehicles poses to the autoworkers union and to employment in the U.S. vehicle manufacturing industry, which stands at around one million.“It’s about changing the perception of what’s happening,” Mr. Abuelsamid said. “It’s a balancing act between your work force and your investors,” who would prefer to see labor costs rise more slowly or decline at unionized automakers like Ford and General Motors.Because electric vehicles incorporate far fewer moving parts than gasoline-powered vehicles, they require significantly less labor — about 30 percent less, according to figures that Ford has generated.As a result, estimates suggest that the toll of electrification on auto industry jobs could be significant absent large new government subsidies. A report released in September by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, which has ties to organized labor, found that the auto industry could lose about 75,000 jobs by 2030 without substantial government investment.By contrast, the report found, if additional government subsidies encourage the domestic manufacturing of components and greater market share for vehicles assembled in the United States, the industry could add about 150,000 jobs over the same period.President Biden has backed substantial subsidies for electric vehicles, including vehicles made by unionized employees, but those measures have languished in the Senate and their prospects are uncertain.In the meantime, much of the job growth tied to electric vehicles has occurred at nonunion facilities owned by newer automakers like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid, or U.S.-based battery facilities owned wholly or in part by foreign companies like the South Korean manufacturers SK Innovation and LG Chem.In Thursday’s announcement, Ford noted that its new battery and vehicle production facilities in the South would create about 11,000 jobs. But those employees will not automatically become union members, and workers in those states tend to face an uphill battle in unionizing.For investors, however, Ford’s additional investments in electric vehicles appears to be welcome news as the company seeks to reinvent itself amid competition from the likes of Tesla and Rivian. Ford’s stock price, which had dropped substantially this year, rose more than 2 percent on Thursday.Ford also said Thursday that it sold 6,254 electric vehicles in May, a jump of more than 200 percent from a year earlier. That number included 201 F-150 Lightnings, which the company started producing in April.The company has about 200,000 reservations for the Lightning, which is central to its efforts to catch up to Tesla, and stopped accepting new ones because production will take months to meet demand.Ford indicated that sales of the truck would be much higher in the coming months as production increased and trucks in transit reached dealerships. Ford is aiming to produce 150,000 Lightning trucks a year by the end of 2023.Sales of electric vehicles — and conventional cars — have been limited by a shortage of computer chips. Ford’s overall sales of new vehicles in May fell 4.5 percent from a year earlier. Auto executives are also increasingly worried that the supply of lithium, nickel and other raw materials needed to make the batteries that power electric cars is not keeping up with the growing demand for those vehicles.Vikas Bajaj More