‘It’s really an employees’ market’: What HR needs to know about the jobs report

Well, that was unexpected.

The US economy started off the year with a bang by adding 353,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in January, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Economists had expected just 185,000 new jobs, Jared Bernstein, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, told HR Brew.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, remained steady at 3.7%. Sectors including professional and business services, healthcare, retail trade, and social assistance saw the most gains, the BLS noted.

January marked the economy’s 24th consecutive month with an unemployment rate below 4%, CNN reported, as well as another month of job growth in excess of expectations. The economy added 333,000 jobs in December, according to the BLS, twice as many as the 160,000 jobs economists had projected.

Different stories. The BLS report paints a rosy picture, and Bernstein agreed that “the labor market is really at the heart of the strong overall economy.” However, ADP and Challenger, Gray & Christmas recently reported more muted figures.

On January 31, ADP reported that private employers added just 107,000 jobs in January, below the 150,000 that MarketWatch said analysts were expecting. (It’s not unusual for ADP and BLS to report vastly different numbers because, according to CNN, they use different data points. Additionally, ADP only looks at the private sector, and at employers that use its payroll system.)

And Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in a report released February 1, noted a 136% increase in job cuts from December to January. The firm cited “broader economic trends and a strategic shift towards increased automation and AI adoption in various sectors” as some of the reasons for the layoffs.

Zoom out. So, what does the BLS report mean for HR? Well, right now the power is in the hands of workers, Trevor Bogan, regional director Americas at the Top Employer Institute, told us.

It’s up to HR—especially in the wake of the layoffs that dominated the news cycle in January—to prioritize fostering better connections with their employees. And not just their current employees, but the ones they laid off, too, Bogan said. After all, they’re the ones who will be discussing their experience with prospective employers and on job websites.

“It’s really an employees’ market right now,” he told HR Brew. “Employees want to be heard. They want to have a voice, but now it’s [about putting] action to what they’re saying. And so that’s where HR is going to have to develop and accelerate [their] listening strategies and put more action into what they’re hearing [from employees].”