Today's Job Market Data Is Bad. Here's How Bad.

Corporate layoffs are rising at the fastest pace since the Great Recession, and at the same time, Washington is quietly hiring back federal workers after cutting more than 387,000 jobs.

In today’s Breaking Job News, host Pete Newsome breaks down the Conference Board’s latest Employment Trends Index, where six of eight indicators turned negative, and workers say jobs are now as hard to get as they were in early 2021.

Pete also examines a Washington Post investigation into the federal workforce reversal, including the rehiring of 123,000 employees after sweeping DOGE-era cuts, and why agencies like the VA, IRS, and Social Security are struggling to fill critical roles.

Meanwhile, a new Business Insider report shows CEOs are considering layoffs at the fastest pace since 2009. Wall Street continues rewarding cost-cutting, and new Morgan Stanley data shows productivity rising while employment falls in AI-exposed industries.

Is this stagnation? Policy uncertainty? AI restructuring? Or all of the above?

Pete breaks down what the data actually says and what it means for workers right now.

Articles:
1. Conference Board ETI: https://www.conference-board.org/topics/employment-trends-index/
2. Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/09/trump-hiring-federal-workers/
3. Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/ceos-make-job-cuts-worries-about-economy-and-ai-impacts-2026-3

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Transcript

Headlines And Market Snapshot

Pete Newsome 0:00

Welcome back to Corning the Job Market. Today's headlines include a Washington Post investigation into the Trump administration's reversal on federal hiring after they cut more than 387,000 workers. Also a business insider story that indicates CEOs are considering layoffs at the fastest pace since the Great Recession. But first, the Conference Board just released its employment trends index this morning. The headline number went up. It went from 105.8 in January to 105.37 in February, very small increase, which sounds fine, but it's not because six of the eight components they measure contributed negatively, which is effectively a full reversal from January when seven of eight were positive. So what's actually going on? Let's start with the number that should get the most attention. And this one is personal to me because it is the sentiment, right? This is what workers feel, this is what workers are saying really matters. And I trust that as much as any market data right now because the market data is so inconsistent. It's revised so frequently. And I want to listen to the people because that's who's really experiencing how things are really going. And what the report tells us is that the share of consumers who say jobs are hard to get rose to 20.6%. And that is the highest level since early 2021. Remember what early 2021 was? Of course, everyone does. And that was when it was peak COVID time, it was a mess. And so that is just a really bad sign. I mean, there's nothing drastic going on right now, and unfortunately, there's just a whole lot of nothing big happening, nothing big changing. That's what the job market story has really been for the past year and a half now, probably. Is it it's just this hurry up and wait mode. But the fact that workers are really feeling it at that level back to early 2021, that was really alarming for me to see this morning. Also in the report, initial unemployment claims were up after declining steadily since September. Temp hiring fell. I don't talk about that a lot, even though it's my industry. I know it's not broadly interesting, but I do believe that the staffing industry is a leading indicator of what is going on in the market. And also industrial production weakened. Manufacturing and trade sales went down, job openings contributed negatively. So this report, even though overall it went up slightly, I'm not exactly sure uh that that is what we should be paying attention to when everything else just looks bleak right now. The conference board's economist, Mitchell Barnes, said that the 92,000 drop in BLS payrolls last month was driven by temporary factors like weather and strikes. Come on, Mitchell, I don't think we're buying that for a second. His read is that the labor market is roughly imbalanced because labor force growth has slowed too. And I'd I'd push back on that framing. In balance because fewer people are even trying, is it stability? That's just putting a better spin on stagnation. So that is their perspective. We did get another perspective on Friday that I didn't get to talk about yet. And this is a press release that was kind of quietly put out by the Secretary of the Department of Labor, who blamed the February payroll drop that I talked about in detail on Friday on the same thing record-breaking strikes and bad winter weather. Wow, that they seem very in sync on this, don't they? And she pointed to wages rising 3.8% year over year and said positive signs for our economy continue to show American workers are recovering from the mess left behind by Biden. It's been over a year. Can we really still blame Biden? Her takeaway uh was that she's optimistic that job growth will continue. Well, I'm glad someone is. We just talked about how the workers, the ones who are in the job market, aren't. So some bureaucrat is telling us they're optimistic despite all the data that we're seeing. Uh look, uh this isn't about politics. I mean, I I blame every administration uh when they spout BS. But honestly, blaming Biden for this jobs report, um that's just a stretch. I'm not seeing that. At some point, the economy that you're running is the economy that you own, right? I think we have to acknowledge that. And wages outpacing inflation is legitimately good news for workers. I want to give credit where it's due on that. But wage growth doesn't help if you can't find a job in the first place. So that's what we're dealing with right now. And the data uh we just talked about says finding a job is getting harder than it was before. I mean, that is reality right now. Now, there were two bright spots out of eight things that this index measures. Involuntary part-time workers as a share of all part-timers fell to 16.2%, which is down from 19.4% in December. And so that's a good thing. More people getting uh full-time hours is is positive, but just a couple of positive indicators out of eight doesn't tell a healthy story. Barnes also said that mixed signals may persist as businesses and consumers work through policy uncertainty. Well, yeah, I mean, that has been the theme for a while. Nobody knows what's coming next, so no one's willing to commit to anything. So that is where we are. And the next story a year after the doge-driven push to slash the federal workforce, the Trump administration is now hiring people back. OPM director Scott Kapoor told the Washington Post that after restructurings, sometimes you over-restructure. Okay, great. What once again with the bureaucrats speak uh today, I love it. But here's the math. More than 387,000 federal employees were fired, laid off, or took buyouts since Trump took office, and about 123,000 have been hired back. The fallout is showing up at agencies that handle things people actually depend on. VA job applications are down 50% this fiscal year. That is just a huge decline. And the IRS, not that we're any fans of the IRS, don't get me wrong there, but the IRS hired only 50 of the 2200 it needed for tax season. So again, I who's are we really complaining about that? Maybe, but that is, I think it's indicative of a problem. Uh, maybe not a problem that most of us are going to gripe about, but but that's only 2% of its target. So the IRS can't hire. Uh Social Security lost about 7,000 workers and had to pull people off of their regular jobs to answer phones. So look, take that much more seriously. We need people making sure that they have access to their Social Security payments. Whether you like that program or not, a lot of people, millions of people rely on that. So that's important. And they lost 7,000 workers that clearly they needed based on what this story is telling us. Also, the agency that defends against cyber attacks, they lost nearly 40% of their staff. VA Secretary Douglas Collins told Congress that he wants to hire more healthcare workers, but can't compete on salary. He said when you have starting salaries of 600,000 for anesthesiologists in the community, and I can't pay that, I don't blame them going somewhere else. Nope, nobody would. I mean, you have to look salary is always the equalizer in the labor market. It is supply and demand. If there's finite supply, they are going to go elsewhere. You have to figure out how to compensate those folks accordingly. And that's a dynamic we see in every industry. When you can't match the market on comp, you're not going to fill the rolls. That's just the way it is. And that is not indicative of a talent shortage. It's just a pay gap. And the rehiring comes with new rules that give the White House more control. That's what also this article told us. Uh, gives them control over who gets hired and fired. Some job postings now ask applicants to explain how they'd advance the president's policy priorities. Wow, interesting. Do we really need the person at the VA answering how they're going to advance the current administration's policy priorities? I don't know that we want them involved in that. But here's where we are, for better or worse. Doge is gone. Elon Musk split with Trump over the tax bill. You probably remember that. The department just kind of quietly went away. And there was no large-scale waste or fraud that really was ever definitively identified. And here's a crazy number or stat is that the government actually spent more in 2025 than the year before. So not a great look in the Washington Post. But here's the final uh story for today. January corporate job cuts were the biggest for the start of any year since 2009, during the Great Recession. And that was before the big loss that was reported on Friday of 92,000 jobs. This is a story from Business Insider. They dug into why so many companies are reaching for the layoff lever. And the short answer is it uncertainty on every front. So though these stories are all intertwined, aren't they? There's a lot of what I called earlier hurry up and wait, things not moving, stagnation, whatever you want to call it, but between the economy, tariffs, elections, AI, global conflict, right? Not a war. That's what we were told. We're not at war. We'll call it an operation, I guess. But global conflict, no matter how you slice it. And when that happens, CEOs are they're gonna hold on to cash. They're not gonna move. And as we know, payroll is usually the biggest line item on a balance sheet. So it's not good for the workforce. And that's what I care about. That's what I am focused on talking about. And it's been clear so far that Wall Street isn't discouraging this behavior. Companies like Meta and Spotify saw their stocks rewarded after announcing layoffs. And it just happened with Block as well. And so when you have executive pay tied to stock performance, I mean that just creates a feedback loop that accelerates cuts in a time like this. Also, a Morgan Stanley survey of more than 900 executives found that companies in five industries likely to feel near-term AI impacts saw employment fall 4% on average over the past year while productivity rose. Okay, so big camp out there that says AI is not really going to have an impact on the job market. AI washing is the reason for all these cuts. But this is pretty clear-cut that these companies were using AI to a more significant degree. They're doing it with less, they're doing the same work or better, more productivity with fewer employees. At some point, we have to acknowledge that this is having an actual impact. Also, we've seen that Amazon, they eliminated more than 57,000 corporate roles since late 2022. They're obviously doing really well. Although not everyone is buying the AI narrative. KPMG US CEO Tim Walsh told Business Insider he doesn't see AI behind most cutbacks. Companies are just reassessing where they need people. Yes, that's a way to put it. They're just reassessing. So, look, my take is that two things can be true at the same time. Some companies are genuinely restructuring around AI. That is happening. And others are likely using it as a cover for cuts that they want to make anyway. Because look, AI is a trendy thing to talk about. It's a trend that's not going away, in my opinion. But that's better than giving other reasons, and you're not going to get blamed for being innovative and going towards AI. So to some degree, that is probably what's going on. I think it's a lot of both right now, but regardless, it is bad for workers. That is who is suffering right now because we're seeing a frozen economy, companies not spending money, restructuring, whether it's AI or otherwise. And as we led with today, workers are feeling it. They are not feeling positive. And when you see job cuts like the one we just reported on Friday, it's just not a good, not a good trend. The sentiment is poor right now. So hopefully we start to see some turnarounds soon. But man, we need to we need to see some good news in order for that to happen. We need a catalyst. I'm not sure what it's gonna be, but I'll keep looking for it and I'll keep reporting the facts in the uh as they as they exist, right? As they exist. I'm not making up the news. I'm just sharing it so everyone's in the loop. That's it for today. So here's our fun fact before we close, and this is about networking. The stat is that 80% of jobs are never posted publicly. They're filled via word of mouth. So candidates are fighting for that 20%. And if you're a standout, you have a great opportunity. I am a strong believer that you should only apply to jobs you're actually qualified for and then take extra steps. That's a different topic for a different day. But just know that if there's an organization you want to work for, four out of five times, those jobs are never going to be posted publicly. So leverage your personal network, focus on building your personal network if you don't have a strong one already, and that will expose you to more opportunities. So that is it for today. I will say goodbye. Thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe, share with anyone who you think might be interested, and I will look forward to talking to you tomorrow.