With the
new year may come a career change for some. In this week's Deep Dive, News
12's Kristie Reeter is taking a deep dive into the job market to see where
hiring has been, where it has slowed and how inflation is having an impact.
In a News
12 poll, New Jersey residents were asked: When looking for a job, what extras
are important to you? A majority said they are looking for flexible hours --
57%.
When looking at the job market, experts are always tracking the
unemployment numbers, and so is Caleb Silver from Investopedia.
We heard this week a warning from the Federal Reserve Chair that
high inflation could actually make it harder to restore the job market, so we
asked Silver: what does that mean and what are we seeing in New Jersey?
“What the Fed is saying is that the way we battle inflation is
raising interest rates, that raises borrowing costs for companies which could
depress hiring if it gets more expensive to expand and hire more workers, plus
wages have been rising too, you get wage inflation as well,” says Silver. “In
New Jersey, you got the unemployment rate down now at 6.6%, that is still the 4th
highest in the country. The country is 3.9%. The major [of the] counties that we
track though across New Jersey, [are] doing slightly
better than the state average. Hudson at 5.7%, Bergen 5.1%, Monmouth at 4.6%
and Morris County down at 4.2% close to the national average."
If the unemployment rate is going down, well why has hiring
slowed?
“They are based on two different surveys,” says Silver. “So, the
unemployment rate, the Labor Department [is] calling households
and seeing who is filing for unemployment, less people filing for unemployment
claims, but not that many people being hired except in the restaurant industry
which lost the most jobs, so you are not seeing a ton of hiring, but you are
seeing less people filing for unemployment."