With the restaurant job boom “behind us,” we expect salary growth to slow in 2024
One of the biggest contributors to the post-pandemic job market boom is the slowdown.
New data ADP data released Wednesday revealed that the United States added 103,000 private sector jobs, falling short of economists’ expectations of an increase of 110,000 jobs. One of the biggest laggards in the labor market has proven to be leisure and hospitality, an industry that has been unable to find enough workers during the heat of the pandemic. The sector lost 7,000 jobs in November.
“Restaurants and hotels have been the biggest job creators during the post-pandemic recovery,” said Nella Richardson, chief economist at ADP. “But that boost is behind us, and the return to trend in leisure and hospitality suggests that the economy as a whole will see more moderate employment and wage growth in 2024.”
Wednesday’s data is in line with other indicators that the labor market is returning to normal after the pandemic. On Tuesday, the latest Job Opportunities and Labor Turnover report, or JOLTS, was released on Tuesday open The ratio of job openings to the number of unemployed workers fell to 1.34, its lowest reading since August 2021. The unemployment rate has been rising over the past few months, rising from its lowest level in several decades, and employees are not fleeing their jobs. And the “quiet withdrawal” madness is at the same pace in 2021.
Part of that may be because they don’t get a big reward for leaving. Additional data from ADP shows that annual wage growth for workers who change jobs fell to 8.3% in November, the slowest pace of growth since June 2021. Meanwhile, workers who kept the same job saw wages rise 5.6% last month, the lowest since September 2021. The job switching bonus is now the smallest in three years, as ADP tracks the data point.
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