Since late last year, the U.S. labour market has been experiencing a strange set of circumstances: rolling annual job growth has slowed to levels consistent with the immediate aftermath of a recession, yet the unemployment rate has remained relatively stable for almost 2 years, hovering around 4.3%.
In the last 12 months of data, the U.S. economy has created just 251,000 new jobs, but because of the fact that net migration is very low or, by some recent estimates, potentially negative, it doesn’t need to create anything like the normal level of job growth for unemployment to remain relatively stable.
If the current crisis in the Middle East turns into a full-blown global recession, then the U.S. is better placed than average for its labour market to endure it, on paper.
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