What to Do If You Need a Job in the Frustrating Labor Market

Michael Moeller is exhausted from searching for a full-time job since being laid off from his director-level role in April.

He said that it was “brutal” to keep getting rejection emails from companies. “But also to be quite frank, these are jobs that I don’t even remember applying to at this point either,” he added.

But Moeller, who is in his early 30s, said there’s a silver lining to still being stuck on the job hunt. He can build his business, Kentucky Hop Water, more quickly. He also has some time to train for marathons and take on bartending work to make some income.

He hopes to get a job soon and return to running his brand on the side, but it’s been fairly quiet recently.

“It’s been more than a month since I’ve gotten even the opportunity for a screening, so I don’t quite understand what’s going on,” Moeller said.

Last week brought even more dismal news for job seekers. Friday’s brutal jobs report showed anemic growth in August and even a decline in June. It followed Wednesday’s data release showing slightly more unemployed workers in July than job openings for the first time since the post-COVID reopening in 2021.

Of course, softer job growth alone doesn’t mean a recession is certain. “The low-hire, low-fire labor market, like the slow-growth economy, is at risk of a recession, but it’s not enough to cause a recession,” Claudia Sahm, chief economist for New Century Advisors, said in August.

Aspiring job seekers like Moeller may have to consider part-time work, turn passions into businesses, or look for temporary jobs.

This job market slowdown is different from the past

Wage growth and remote work postings have cooled, and job growth has been concentrated in just a handful of industries, like healthcare, although even that has begun to slow.

However, economists said that while the market is unusual, the US isn’t in a recession.

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“We’ve been through periods where job openings decline, where job growth slows, where the unemployment rate rises, but typically those periods are pretty short-lived because a lot of times they end in a recession,” Dante DeAntonio, a senior director at Moody’s Analytics, said in July.

Guy Berger, a workforce economist in residence at Guild and a senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, said in August that the length and moderation of the job market slowdown mean it may not lead to a recession because lower immigration and an aging population suggest the US has “turned the labor supply tap off,” so slower job growth may not be as big a problem as it was a few years ago.​​

Are you struggling to get a job, or have you pivoted to self-employment? Reach out to this reporter to share your story at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

A disheartening job search

The lack of an official recession likely doesn’t comfort the 7 million unemployed people in the US. About a dozen job seekers recently spoke with Business Insider, including some who’ve been unemployed for at least a year. Many of them have tried networking, upskilling, and leveraging AI. Some said they have expanded their search, while others have tried to keep it targeted.

They described job searching as brutal, frustrating, and disheartening.

“I feel like companies are really looking for their unicorn person,” said Laura Perry-Fields, who has been on the job hunt for the past few months. “They’re looking for this perfect person, and if you don’t check all their boxes, they’re still hoping that somebody else can fill that need.”

Some people are excited to try something new, like building a business or trying contract work. Roy Miller, 61, was laid off and navigating his first serious job search in about a decade. The job search has been tough, but he has also used the time to reflect on how else he can leverage his skills.

“I don’t want to wear my khakis and polo shirt to an office every day,” Miller said. “So I’ve been looking at, OK, what’s next? What does this new season bring? Increasingly, it’s let’s get back to being an entrepreneur and use the skillset that I have.”

How to get a job right now

So what do you do if you need a job in this low-hiring, low-firing market? Workplace experts and job seekers said you may have to apply for short-term roles or lean on side hustles that can help build experience and fill gaps while looking for full-time work.

Sam DeMase, a career expert at ZipRecruiter, suggested pivoting to an open role “that already values existing skill sets you have, rather than you having to go get a new degree or learn new skills from scratch,” such as a teacher applying to be a curriculum builder for corporate training.

DeMase said to identify a few top-aligned skills and figure out how to boast about those during the job search.

Laid-off employees can also use their skills to move into self-employment and expand their job search from just full-time roles. Michelle Reisdorf, a district director at talent solutions firm Robert Half, suggested people shift their mindsets about needing a permanent job because sometimes companies need someone temporarily to help meet project deadlines.

“You might be out there interviewing and not have enough skills to land the perfect job you want, but by taking a contract role, you could pick up many skills that suddenly make you that much more attractive to an employer,” Reisdorf said.

She said a contract gig could also lead to a full-time position when there’s an opportunity.

Thomas Reynolds would be happy if contract work at a friend’s law firm led to generating full-time work. For the past few months, he’s been mainly looking at the private sector for new work after his government position was cut in January. Reynolds, who is a lawyer, also just went back to law school to get an additional degree and to buy some job-search time.

“My friend is really gracious, and he said that this could turn into something bigger, and we can help support you, and I can do some business development, and he’s definitely still keeping me in mind for projects,” Reynolds said.