Is the job market really getting worse? 3 recent job seekers join

Is the economy headed for a recession? If so, why are jobs so strong? The data is in and even economists are confused.

U.S. job growth beat expectations in July, reaching a point of recovering the 22 million jobs lost during the pandemic, despite gloomy economic forecasts that a recession may be on the way.

Workers, for their part, are still changing jobs — 4.2 million people quit in June — and many are getting big raises and exciting career opportunities. However, layoff headlines coming from the tech sector are shaking worker confidence.

CNBC Make It spoke with three new and recent job marketers about how they really feel about the mixed messages.

While layoffs remain at record lows, according to the Labor Department, many were shocked to see some tech companies take a dive after growing at a rapid pace last year. That surprised Ashley Williams, a software engineer in New York who is looking for work for the second time in seven months.

Williams, 25, was a high school teacher. Like many people looking for better pay and work-life balance during Covid, she took part in a coding bootcamp to switch careers to tech. After graduating last October, she remembers finding many job opportunities.

She joined Ribbon, a real estate startup, in January. By July, she was one of 136 employees affected by a mass layoff.

“Going through a layoff was not something I expected at all, coming from a career in public school teaching,” Williams says. “I never worried about losing my job.”

She thought technology would be just as robust: “People used to say, “Everybody always needs engineers,” which is true. But I didn’t expect how volatile that career could be, especially in a pre-venture company.”

Now she finds herself in a crowded field of newly laid-off engineers, especially those early in their careers, vying for the same jobs.

Beyond technology, worker confidence in the job market appears to be declining, according to a July ZipRecruiter index. More than a quarter believe there will be there will be fewer jobs in six months, and roughly half feel financial pressure to take the first offer they get.

Williams takes a sober approach. “Having a job is more important to me now than having a perfect job,” she says.

She adds that her biggest challenge is being “emotionally ready” to go through intensive technical interviews again. But she knows she has to jump right back in.

“The day I got laid off, I felt like I had to go on LinkedIn and say I was being laid off,” Williams says. “I was worried that in a few days another company would do the same and I would be old news.”

Indeed, the market is still quite good for people who want a new and better job. The labor market posted 10.7 million new jobs in June, and there are still roughly 1.8 job openings for every unemployed person.

Courtney Smith, 34, of Thomaston, Connecticut, was laid off from her job at a restaurant in May when the owners decided to close for good. She had seen the writing on the wall: Personal catering never recovers from Covid drops, rising food costs made it difficult to stay afloat and her bosses were approaching retirement age.

The dismissal caused Smith to rethink his next move. She wanted to quit the restaurant job, even though she saw Indeed as “just filled with pages and pages of opportunities” in the dining industry. She didn’t just want a new job — she wanted what she saw as a more fulfilling career.

So she decided to take up an office job and sent out 30 applications for various receptionist jobs, received responses from five and received offers for two. Last week, she accepted a position in a medical office where she feels she can learn and grow. “It feels like my first ‘adult’ job and I’ll have more responsibility,” she says.

Another big plus? She will earn 3.5 times her old salary.

In the last year since the Great Resignation, jaded recruiters have put everything on the table with big signing bonuses, on-the-spot offers and shiny perks that people really want. But recently, new data from Indeed shows that intense recruiting has stabilized. Roughly 5.2% of job listings on Indeed advertised signing bonuses in July, more than triple the same month in 2019, but below the peak in December 2021.

Patricia Shirazi, 32, of San Diego, has also noticed a slowdown in recruiting announcements over the past few months.

A A year ago, Shirazi had his pick of job offers for software engineering jobs at both startups and corporations. After some aggressive recruiting and just a few weeks of interviews, she ended up landing a position at Olive, a healthcare startup that was “hiring like crazy.” In September, the startup announced plans to hire 300 people, increasing the number of employees by 30%, in the last quarter of 2021.

By this summer, however, Shirazi felt her work was slowing down and she lost motivation to work. She rummaged through her inbox and found that the usual flood of recruitment offers was also less intense.

She ended up getting a few calls with Capital One and was hired after a month — a longer and more involved interview process than she’s used to. And just weeks after accepting her new job, she learned Olive was laying off 450 employees due to over-hiring.

Shirazi says she’s encouraged to see that her Capital One team is still adding staff, though not at a breakneck pace.

“Now I’m just one person in a big corporation, so I don’t know exactly what’s going on under the hood,” says Shirazi. “But with a startup, there’s always a lot of speculation around the product, and they can’t risk going through volatile times.”

“I’m glad I made the move at the right time,” she adds.

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