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November 19, 2025 • 14 mins

After a period characterized as “low-hire, low-fire,” the American labor market is seeing a surge of layoffs from companies like Amazon, Starbucks, UPS and Target. And that’s pushing more job applicants towards traditionally less-desirable occupations, like substitute teaching, traffic flagging and waste management. 

Today on the Big Take, Sarah Holder is joined by economic reporter Mike Sasso to discuss what’s happening in this often-overlooked corner of the labor market and what it means for the economy overall.

Read more: The Job Market Is Heating Up — for Jobs That People Usually Don't Want

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Growing up in a small town in Kansas, Danielle Norwood
loved listening to the radio, but she didn't predict it
would become her career.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I had an opportunity to babysit for the general manager
of a radio station in town. He said, you have
a really interesting voice. Have you ever thought about getting
into radio?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
She gave it a try, and soon she was hooked.
She started out as a board operator and worked her
way up the radio ranks in Solina, Kansas.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Back in the day, you're pushing commercials and you would
give the weather, and I actually had a radio show,
so I was playing records.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Eventually she moved to Topeka to host her own talk show.
By last fall, she was nearly forty years into her
radio career and hosting an award winning morning show for
a local station. But last November her station told her
they were letting her go. She was disappointed, upset, but
you thought that given her experience, she'd be able to

(01:07):
get a new job at another station before too long.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
And I wasn't even going to just stay in just
Kansas or the central area. I was open to going
anywhere to get a good job.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
How long did you expect it to take to find
a new job.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
It was in the holidays season, so I thought, you know,
maybe by the end of January I would be doing
something radio related. And when that didn't happen, I'm like, okay,
well wait a second. So my next thought was, Okay,
I've got public relations experience, I could do marketing. I

(01:48):
have all these other things that are a part of
being in broadcasting that I could apply for.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
But as weeks turned into months, Danielle started to get demoralized.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Nobody was even thinking to give me an interview after
a long time. It really your ego takes a hit.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
She realized she might have to pivot.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Well, all of the rejections had gotten into the hundreds, Like,
maybe this is not working for me.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
She started looking at job she'd never have considered before,
jobs outside of radio and marketing. And Danielle is one
of many job hunters right now in that position who
are navigating a uniquely challenging time in the American labor market.
Bloomberg's Mike Sasso says some of them are expanding their
job search in ways they wouldn't have expected.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
I think when you do.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
See people line up to be traffic flaggers, and you
hear that jobs at recyclable centers are much more easily
filled now. It's a sign that things are rough out there.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Holder, And this is the big take from Bloomberg News
Today on the show inside an unusual dynamic playing out
in one corner of the American labor market. Jobs once
considered undesirable are suddenly seeing higher applications and lower turnover. Mike'
sasso covers the economy for Bloomberg and to get a

(03:23):
pulse on how the economy is doing, he looks at
things like the unemployment rate, sure, but also at less
formal indicators of how real people are experiencing the economy
right now. And a few weeks back, an interesting data
point caught his eye.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
Indeed, the big Giant job board just put out some
news about Christmas, Thanksgiving kind of holiday season jobs. They're
able to monitor, you know, how many people click on
seasonal job postings on Indeed, and they were showing a.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Spike, a nearly thirty cent spike year over year, and
clicks on seasonal job postings on Indeed.

Speaker 4 (04:05):
Sometimes you just operate on hunches as a reporter and
seasonal jobs, by their nature are kind of your second choice.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Most people would like to have a permanent job.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
So I just got the wondering, wondering if there are
other jobs that are typically hard to fill that might
now be seeing more interest.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
A lot of those are blue collar oriented roles that
I happen to know that they have very high turnover rates.
They often have something that makes them less appealing, like stereotypically,
you know, the waste industry. Solid waste can be a
difficult role to fill. Traffic flaggers. You're kind of out

(04:46):
there flagging traffic in thirty degree weather or ninety five
degree weather, and often for twelve hours at a time.
The military, for example, it's a job that it can
be dangerous. Obviously, you can be torn away from your
family for months or a year on end if you're deployed.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
So high turnover, potentially dangerous, unpleasant, temporary, and lower pay
are some of the That's pretty much.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
You pretty much wrapped it up.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
There was something unappealing about these jobs that would require
a second look in a kind of a weaker market,
and sure enough, there was some evidence that they are
seeing more interest and more applications.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Waste management companies are reporting higher employee retention rates. According
to the Solid Waste Giant waste Management, turnover among garbage
truck drivers is at an all time company low. Military
branches are reaching their recruiting goals ahead of schedule this year,
and traffic flagger companies who send people to direct traffic

(05:48):
at construction sites are having a good year too.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
Two three years ago, the head of an Atlanta flagging
company was sort of lucky if he could get ten
applications a week, and so he's now getting up to
a week, which is you know what, six or sevenfold increase.
I don't want to overplay it and say that people
are lining up and banging down the door to get
into solid waste jobs or to be traffic flaggers, but

(06:12):
at the least they're telling me that some of the
real strain they saw from a couple of years ago
has alleviated.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
The head of the Atlanta based traffic flagging company told
Mike he's gotten so much interest he's actually starting to
be more selective about who he hires.

Speaker 4 (06:28):
He used to basically hire anyone who could pass a
drug test and pass a certification test three four years ago.
Now he's only able to hire fifteen percent of the
people applying to be traffic flaggers.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
A fifteen percent acceptance rate is as selective as the
top us university's admissions for their first year classes. Some
of the other jobs Mike is tracking are more traditional,
but they have certain features that economists call disamenities that
make them less appealing. Jobs like substitute teaching.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
It's a hard role to fill. I know they have
historically had high vacancy rates, really irregular work, generally low
pay seventeen eighteen dollars an hour.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
I can remember.

Speaker 4 (07:14):
Flicking staples at the substitute teachers or shooting spitballs back
in the day.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
I could tell you everything I'm nervous about because it's
not in my comfort zone to be in charge of
a bunch of kids.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
That's Danielle Norwood again. After she was laid off from
the local radio station, she spent months applying to job
after job, and when nobody got back to her, she
started thinking outside the box. She drove uber for a while.
She'd already been doing that to supplement her radio income,
but she found that she couldn't make a living from it,

(07:51):
so this summer she decided she'd apply to get her
teaching license and become a substitute teacher.

Speaker 5 (07:57):
It's the only thing where the door is open.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
They still need a lot of substitute teachers to help out.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
She can see the disamenities clearly, no paid time off,
no health insurance, lack of consistency.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
So, I mean, there's all these considerations to have to
think about, and it's like, well, do I really want
to do this and I'm not getting what I used
to get, But at the same time, I need to
check a little money is better than no money at
this particular point.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
According to the latest medium wage data from the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, substitute teachers make about eighteen fifty an hour.
Coming up How the labor market got to this point
and what it means for the economy. Bloomberg's Mike Sasso

(08:56):
has been tracking how traditionally hard to fill jobs are
starting to get a lot more appealing. It's a sign
that employers are back in the driver's seat.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
Used to be.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
There was this concept about three years ago or something
was called labor hoarding, and it was basically the concept
that employers had had such a hard time filling roles
during the pandemic that even if things slowed down and
they were a little top heavy with people, they were
not going to let workers go. It was a great
time to be an employee. We saw wage rates rise

(09:30):
five percent a year. Pretty much. That's all gone away.
Now it's gotten ugly out there.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
That ugliness in the labor market is showing up in
economic data in subtle and not so subtle waste.

Speaker 4 (09:43):
The unemployment rate is somewhat Economists will say that it's
somewhat misleading because there has been this low higher low
fire phenomenon going on, which basically means there's very very
little hiring and you're seeing people sit in the unemployment
line for or six months, eight months, nine months. The
rate of hiring is actually at recessionary levels. So while

(10:08):
the unemployment level at four point three percent is still
fairly low, the rate at which companies are filling roles
is at recessionary levels, and so that makes it extremely
hard to get a job. There's a metric where they
study how long unemployed people have been unemployed. In about
twenty six percent of unemployed people have been out of

(10:31):
work for but half year.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
Over a half year. Now that's a very high.

Speaker 4 (10:36):
Level it's one of the highest in the past decade, excluding,
of course, the pandemic when things are off the charts.
But I think what it says, it's a sign of
how challenging it is to define work right now.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Worker's confidence about finding a new job is also waning.
A recent Harris poll conducted for Bloomberg found that nearly
half of employed respondents said it would take them four
months or more to find a job of similar quality
if they lost their jobs today. For a widening pool
of American workers, that's not a hypothetical. Companies from Amazon

(11:11):
and Target to Ups and Starbucks have collectively announced tens
of thousands of layoffs this year.

Speaker 4 (11:18):
My colleague just did an article. He's studied something called
a warn notice. When companies make a mass layoff, they're
supposed to notify their state government, and it shows up
in these things called warn notices, And he noted that
in October nationally there were some of the highest readings
for warn notices in the past twenty years.

Speaker 6 (11:39):
What we talked about earlier is the fact that the
power dynamic had switched from the hands of workers into
the hands of employers.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
What would it take to actually reverse that dynamic again.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Boy, that's hard to say. I mean, you'd have to
have some shock.

Speaker 4 (11:57):
I mean, certainly everyone's kind of watching immigrant right now,
and some of the data has shown a disappearance at
least from the labor roles of something like two million workers,
and there has been a lot of confusion over the
impacts of that. And suddenly, certainly, if those industries are
potentially at risk of losing a lot of manpower, that

(12:21):
kind of a shock to the labor market.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Competitor put power.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
In the hands of workers if there's some major shortage,
I mean, that would probably be limited there as certain
roles like construction, like hospitality, you know, hotels. Of course,
those who would be likely to see it first.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
In the meantime, job seekers who are flocking to jobs
that haven't always been desirable can take comfort in knowing that,
even if they're not full time with benefits, they might
have a better chance of being around for the foreseeable future.
That's because it's harder to replace them with AI. Unlike
some of the jobs that have been eliminated recently.

Speaker 4 (12:59):
We have seen some companies specifically acknowledge AI and automation
being a factor, and some actually mentioned specifically targeting some
roles for automation, and so some companies seem to be
taking advantage of the increases in automation and AI right
now to reduce their costs. It's a little bit worrying

(13:22):
if you're caught up in that, and so we're kind
of watching to see how much of that happens as
you a passing phase.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Danielle Norwood is trying to look on the bright side.
She took her licensing exam to teach in the state
of Missouri and she just got her score back.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Which was ninety six point one five, which I was
screaming to Jesus because it was almost like for me
taking the bar. It was not an easy test to take.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
She's working on getting her Kansas license now too, and
soon she'll be able to start teaching. And while subbing
is in her top pick of jobs, there are us
that Danielle says she's looking forward.

Speaker 5 (14:02):
To being able to hopefully influence kids and to let
them know that there are people cheering for them and
if they have challenging situations, because I grew up in
a challenging situation too, economically, but you don't have to
be the situation you're in, you could always rise above
and push through, and I just hope to be a

(14:23):
lot of that for the kids that I deal with.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
To get more from the Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com Slash podcast offer. Thanks for listening. We'll be
back tomorrow.
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