Nearly half of US workers eye new jobs amid inflation and job security concerns

WASHINGTON (TND) — Almost half, 48%, of workers plan to look for a new opportunity in the next 12 months despite a weakening job market, according to a new Bankrate survey.

Last year, 56% of workers had planned to look for a new job, so the number declined slightly. Either way, many Americans want more money and are nervous about job security.

We all know that inflation essentially robbed purchasing power from the pocketbooks of all Americans, with the rise in the consumer price index reducing that purchasing power by about 20% the other thing is that our survey finds that a majority of workers have some level of concern about their job security,” explainedMark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst with Bankrate.

Seventy percent of workers have been worried about their job security since the Federal Reserve began raising rates in March 2022.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell spoke about their efforts Friday.

Our objective has been to restore price stability while maintaining a strong labor market, avoiding the sharp increases in unemployment that characterized earlier disinflationary episodes when inflation expectations were less well anchored. While the task is not complete, we have made a good deal of progress toward that outcome.

As a result, workers looking for a new job do not have as many options as they did a few years ago. The U.S. only added 114,000 jobsand the unemployment rate increased to 4.3% in July.

“There are forecasts that suggest that we may see some further slowing of hiring, that we may see a slight increase in the unemployment rate, but that’s not consistent with a recession at all. It’s just simply that we’re coming away from a job market that was unusually tight, and so this is the normalization that is occurring as we get farther away from the effects of the pandemic,” Hamrick concluded.

Twenty-one percent of workers say their employment/career situation has worsened since the Fed began raising rates in March 2022, 57% say it’s about the same, and 22% said it has improved.

Forty-three percent are likely to ask for a raise at work, and 42% plan to ask for more work flexibility.

Twenty-nine percent of workers will likely start their own business within a year.

I think this underscores the dynamism and the strength of the American economy, where entrepreneurism is really key for future success. Some of these businesses that people are planning to start will be the future success stories the future, Amazons, the Nvidias, the Apple computer companies of the future. And so I think that that’s really important to continue to generate success for the American economy, as well as business owners and their current and future team members.