It’s not for nothing that I have, over the past two years, commented here about the strength, resilience, and endurance of the American job market. It’s been, in a word, sensational, going so far as to carry the entire economy on its shoulders, rather than the other way around.
Crisis after innumerable crisis failed to take down the market: Covid, war in Ukraine, inflation, supply chain issues, climate extremes, an insurrection, cryptocurrency turmoil, you name it. And every month, in anticipation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly jobs report, prognosticators were tripping over themselves to be the first to predict the end of the party. Not me, I’m happy to say, but it was everywhere. So far, they’ve all been wrong – month after month.
Now I’m a bit saddened to say that something may be coming upon us – an X-factor – that could, indeed, lead to a downturn in what has been the greatest job market performance in history. But first, keep three things in mind:
- I’m writing this on Jan. 20, a week or so before you’re reading it, and this X-factor is one that could have already passed, but is also so fragile that, if it didn’t pass, could be devastating.
- I’m not issuing this as a prediction, but more as a very real possibility.
- What I’m about to discuss is human nature – and its vagaries and foibles – not the usual, tangible, measurable factors that defined all the aforementioned crises.
The trigger here could be the debt ceiling and how we handle it. None less than Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned of potential worldwide financial disaster if we fail to raise the ceiling. Even if it’s been settled in Congress before this publication, the fight over it will have had an effect on stock and bond markets around the world, on hiring and staffing decisions, on venture capital, and so on. In other words, our job market could be vulnerable. That’s the trigger, but all the other crises had their own triggers, too, so what’s different?
The answer, simply, is that in the face of all the other challenges, we all tried to work in our collective best interest, despite our radical differences – socially, politically, regionally – and to try to solve the problem. Well, most of us, anyway.
Deciding not to raise the debt ceiling, on the other hand, has no chance of working in our own best interest, and using it as a pawn in a game of political chess is just plain nasty, not to mention belligerent. And that’s not a political statement; every rational economist in the world is telling us that. We’d start defaulting on our debt service and – well, what if you did that with your mortgage or car payment? If that happened, I fear the first place the rubble would tumble would be on the job market. What a pity that would be.
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Working against our own self-interest is the X-factor.
Individual human beings and entire societies that are self-actualizing share distinct traits, among them: an innate drive toward growth and self-preservation; a clear and efficient perception of reality and a comfortable relationship with it; problem centering, having something outside themselves they see as a shared mission; and feelings of kinship and identification with the human race. To me, as merely a career coach and job market observer, these characteristics (and others) add up to working in our own best interests and, as a result, seeing the sustenance of the strongest job market in history.
To proffer anything else would be disastrous. Why would we tear down what we’ve built? That would, in terms of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, lead to regressing, rather than progressing.
What a pity that would be.
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Now, all that on the table and with my heart on my sleeve, I still think we have the odds here. I do not think the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down. But will we see some trouble? Yes. Will it be extensive? That’s where we’ll prove how humanistic we are.
In the meantime, in line with our innate drive toward self-preservation, this would be the time to ensure that your career tools – résumés and profiles, strategies, networking – are all, as Henry David Thoreau liked to say, “tucked up and ready for a start.”
If not, after two years of job market growth and career success, what a pity that would be.
Eli Amdur has been providing individualized career and executive coaching, as well as corporate leadership advice since 1997. For 15 years he taught graduate leadership courses at FDU. He has been a regular writer for this and other publications since 2003. You can reach him at eli.amdur@amdurcoaching.com or 201-357-5844.
