A Movers Economy (Hunter Field Editor’s Note)

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The results of the Conference Board’s annually anticipated midyear survey caught me a bit by surprise: One in five U.S. employers surveyed by the group plans to slow hiring in the second half of this year, a recent solemn story in The Wall Street Journal reported.

That’s a much lower level of confidence than the same survey found this time last year, but it doesn’t square with what I’ve observed locally.

At Arkansas Business, we have a very unofficial, very unscientific economic index. We watch it over time, and it tells a surprisingly accurate story about the shape of the economy at any point in time.

This index is quite simply our backlog of candidates for the Movers & Shakers page. In a normal week, we might have 10-20 new hires or promotions left in the hopper. Last week, we had almost 100.

After a lull in April and May, they started piling up in June and July.

Of course, no serious economist would, nor should, use this as some kind of bellwether, but it does provide an interesting snapshot.

As for the real data, Arkansas has maintained stable employment conditions, with the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate holding steady at 3.7% in July for the fifth consecutive month, well below the national rate of 4.2%. The state’s labor force participation rate also remained unchanged at 58.4%.

The number of unemployed Arkansans has increased from 50,588 in March to 53,049 in July, but this has been offset by simultaneous growth in employment and labor force expansion.

Over the past year, Arkansas has outperformed national trends with 1.3% employment growth compared with 1% nationally. Since the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020, Arkansas employment has expanded 6.9% versus 4.8% for the U.S.

I don’t foresee a slowdown, especially as sentiments have shifted on interest rates. Most expect a 25 basis-point rate cut from the Federal Reserve this month. That, I expect, will offer a boost to capital spending and one critical sector — construction, which has seen a significant downturn during the last year. In Arkansas, there are 1,800 fewer construction jobs compared with this time last year.

So despite some mildly concerning trends in national employment numbers and a less-than-stellar survey of some of the country’s largest companies, I remain optimistic about the direction of the local economy after looking at the data, including our little indicator at the back of the publication.

The Movers page is a free service we provide to the business community, and I always feel that is underutilized. Many companies still don’t submit their new hires and promotions to us, missing an easy opportunity to recognize their staff in print.

You can always send submissions directly to me or online here.

Just know that right now, we have quite a backlog to work through, and that’s not such a bad thing.

Email Hunter Field, editor of Arkansas Business, at hfield@abpg.com