Breitbart Business Digest: Happy Workers Won't Budge

Wall Street Expects a Soft Landing

Wall Street is still expecting an economic slowdown, but fund managers expect it to be mild and short-lived.

A net 65 percent of fund managers surveyed by Bank of America in May expect global growth to weaken, up from 63 percent a month ago and the highest share yet in 2023. But 63 percent say they are expecting a “soft landing,” which is Wall Street code for the Federal Reserve bringing down inflation without a severe recession. Just 27 percent say they expect a “hard landing.” Four percent expect “no landing” at all, meaning persistent inflation.

Actual recession fears remain stable, with 47 percent of investors saying a recession is likely in the next 12 months. That’s one point lower than the April survey.

Sixty-one percent told Bank of America that the Fed is done hiking. One third say the Fed still has further to go. Forty-three percent say that the Fed’s first cut will come in the first quarter of 2024, while 24 percent say it will come in the fourth quarter of this year. Fourteen percent say we will have to wait until the second half of next year.

Notably, the share of fund managers who say they expect a rate hike in the second quarter of this year fell from nearly 15 percent a month ago to around five percent. This suggests that the stronger-than-expected economic data and hawkish Fed speak have made a difference.

Workers Are Staying Put…

One sign of a very tight labor market: very few workers are relocating to take up new positions.

The share of job seekers who relocated for a new job fell to 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2023, according to a quarterly survey from executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. This is the lowest level in records stretching back decades.

The “movers and shakers” calculation is down from 3.7 percent in the final quarter of 2022 and 4.6 percent in the same quarter last year.

“In the 1980s and 90s, nearly a third of job seekers would move for new positions,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “Now, remote and hybrid positions are keeping workers at home.”

We would hazard a guess that mortgage rates are playing a role, as well. When rates are very low, selling your house or condo and moving to a new city for a job that pays even a little bit more can seem worthwhile. These days, however, many workers would be trading out of a three percent mortgage into a six or seven percent mortgage, making the financial hurdle for moving your residence higher.

Yet this is definitely a long-term trend against moving for new work. From 1986 through 1997, the annual average for relocating for a new job was nearly 29 percent. In the following decade, this fell to 17.8 percent. From 2008 through 2017, the annual average was just under 11 percent. It fell to 6.7 percent from 2018 through 2020 and has fallen every year since.

…And They’re Very Happy

The Conference Board recently reported that job satisfaction in the U.S. has reached a record high.

“Job satisfaction is at the highest level since our survey began more than three decades ago, largely due to a tight labor market and more flexible work arrangements,” the Conference Board said.

Overall job satisfaction rose 2.1 percentage points to 62.3 percent compared with a year ago. That’s the best score since the Conference Board began running the annual survey in 1987 and a greater than five percentage point increase since the 2020 survey the organization conducted during the first year of the pandemic.

Back in 1987, job satisfaction stood at 61.1 percent. It proceeded to decline in most of the two decades that followed, ebbing at 42.8 percent in 2010. Since then it has been on a steady climb upward. Could there have been something about the 2008 financial crisis that ended up steadily improving working conditions?

The biggest improvement in the most recent year came in “work-life balance.” At the end of 2021, 54.3 percent of employees were happy with the balance. By the end of 2022, this had jumped 5.8 points to 60.1 percent.

We cannot help but wonder if improved job satisfaction might also be contributing to less worker mobility. If workers are happy in their jobs, why relocate?

This high level of personal job satisfaction is all the more remarkable in light of polling that shows people are very unhappy with the state of the economy. The most recent Economist-YouGov poll has 66 percent of the public rating the economy as “poor” or “fair.” Just nine percent rate it as excellent.