In the latest quarterly reports, analysts asked business leaders about their plans for hiring, wages and workforce.
Some have eased off on expanding the workforce. Others worry about the effect of salary increases on their bottom line. Among those still looking to hire, there is concern about the difficulty in attracting and retaining workers, as the job market remains tight.
“You have to work hard to find people and keep them,” Southwest Airlines chief operating officer Andrew Watterson said in a conference call with analysts.
Still, workers’ quit rates, a measure of their confidence in their opportunities and bargaining power, continued to decline in June, according to data released last week. “If our quit rate goes down, that means we’re hiring fewer people than before,” said Rick Cardenas, CEO of Darden Restaurants, owner of the Olive Garden chain.
Wages have been growing less rapidly in recent months, but the pace remained strong in July, with an increase of 4.4% compared to 2022. “There is still higher than normal salary and benefits inflation in our structure. cost,” Andre Schulten, chief financial officer of consumer products company Procter
According to Kathryn A. Mikells, chief financial officer of Exxon Mobil, the oil giant is seeing a drop in the price of chemicals, sand and other inputs. But “for the items involving high labor costs, I would say you don’t necessarily see the deflationary pressure building up yet.”
According to Anthony Wood, CEO of Roku, the streaming device maker will continue to hire, but outside of the United States, in countries where workers are “cheaper than engineers in Silicon Valley.”
Other companies, especially in the tech sector, say they are now more cautious about hiring. Some have frozen their payroll or even cut jobs.
At Meta, which has cut tens of thousands of jobs at Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp since the end of 2022, Mark Zuckerberg said last week that its budget called for “relatively weak headcount growth.”
Sundar Pichai of Alphabet (Google) said the tech giant would “continue to slow spending growth and the pace of hiring.”