US Employment Picture is Breaking Down
Today, job openings came in at 8.827 million vs expectations of 9.465 million, extending the downward trend that began mid-2022. Despite remaining elevated vs pre-pandemic levels, the corporate belt-tightening trend is clear.
This corroborates data released August 4th showing non-farm payrolls at 187k vs 200k expected. Similarly, NFPs has deteriorated over the past several months.
At the same time, people are feeling less confident about their job prospects and are quitting at declining rates.
Despite this, layoffs – while somewhat elevated vs pandemic levels – remain below long-term historical averages. In my opinion, with wounds from pandemic labor shortages only recently healed, mass layoffs won’t happen unless/until the economy enters a meaningful downturn.
Right now, employers and employees are playing a game of poker.
Also:
OpenAI introduces an enterprise version of ChatGPT.
Expect greater adoption by corporations, as this update alleviates many of their security concerns.
Here are the main differences between consumer ChatGPT and ChatGPT Enterprise:
- ChatGPT Enterprise includes access to GPT-4 with no usage caps
- Performance is up to two times faster than previous versions
- Longer context windows for processing longer inputs
- Advanced data analysis capabilities
- ChatGPT Enterprise will allow clients to input company data to train and customize ChatGPT for their own industries and use cases
- SOC 2 compliant and all conversations are encrypted in transit and at rest
- Domain verification, SSO, and usage insights, allowing for large-scale deployment into enterprise