Hiring stays strong for low earners, Vanguard finds

cnbc.com:

The pace of hiring remains strong for lower-earning Americans, holding steady above its pre-pandemic baseline even as the demand for higher-income workers has waned slightly, according to new data from Vanguard.

The hires rate for the bottom third of workers by income (who earn less than $55,000 a year) was 1.5% in March, where it has largely hovered since September 2023, according to a new Vanguard analysis.

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The hires rate gauges the number of new hires as a share of existing employees.

By comparison, it was lower — about 1.2% to 1.3% — in the months leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, Vanguard found.

«This is partly a reflection of lower-paying service industries still trying to recover from the COVID shock — a challenge since many of those workers have transitioned to higher-paying opportunities,» Adam Schickling, a senior Vanguard economist, said in the analysis.

Vanguard is among the nation's largest 401(k) plan administrators. Its analysis is based on new enrollments in its 401(k) plans.

Meanwhile, higher earners have seen hiring decline modestly.

Workers with incomes of $55,000 to $102,000 saw their hiring rate decline to 0.5% in March from 0.6% in September; those earning over $102,000 saw it fall more, to 0.4% from 0.6% during that time, Vanguard said.

Higher-paying industries are «taking a considerably more cautious approach to hiring relative to the hectic 2021 to 2022 hiring surge,» Schickling said.

Conversely, hiring has boomed in sectors like health care and hospitality, which tend to be lower-paying industries, said Julia