Let's finish our look at the US labor market by looking at labor market confidence as expressed in two data sets: overall hiring plans from the
National Federation of Independent Business and Quits from the JOLTs survey.
Hiring plans have stalled at low levels for the last two and a half years. The current level is at the same level of the low point of the early 2000s, indicating an incredible lack of confidence.
Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of data for the JOLTs survey, but what we do have indicates that people are extremely reluctant to leave their current employment. This means that employees have very little confidence in their ability to find a job right now.
