# The Hot Market for Jobs No One Wants

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 19 Nov 2025, 15 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/1dc542e4-dcd8-40b5-b1f4-b39a01640844/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

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 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:09] Speaker 2: Growing up in a small town in Kansas, Danielle Norwood
[0:12] Speaker 2: loved listening to the radio, but she didn't predict it
[0:15] Speaker 2: would become her career.
[0:17] Speaker 1: I had an opportunity to babysit for the general manager
[0:21] Speaker 1: of a radio station in town. He said, you have
[0:24] Speaker 1: a really interesting voice. Have you ever thought about getting
[0:28] Speaker 1: into radio?
[0:29] Speaker 2: She gave it a try, and soon she was hooked.
[0:32] Speaker 2: She started out as a board operator and worked her
[0:35] Speaker 2: way up the radio ranks in Solina, Kansas.
[0:38] Speaker 1: Back in the day, you're pushing commercials and you would
[0:41] Speaker 1: give the weather, and I actually had a radio show,
[0:44] Speaker 1: so I was playing records.
[0:46] Speaker 2: Eventually she moved to Topeka to host her own talk show.
[0:49] Speaker 2: By last fall, she was nearly forty years into her
[0:52] Speaker 2: radio career and hosting an award winning morning show for
[0:55] Speaker 2: a local station. But last November her station told her
[1:00] Speaker 2: they were letting her go. She was disappointed, upset, but
[1:05] Speaker 2: you thought that given her experience, she'd be able to
[1:07] Speaker 2: get a new job at another station before too long.
[1:10] Speaker 1: And I wasn't even going to just stay in just
[1:14] Speaker 1: Kansas or the central area. I was open to going
[1:19] Speaker 1: anywhere to get a good job.
[1:22] Speaker 2: How long did you expect it to take to find
[1:25] Speaker 2: a new job.
[1:26] Speaker 1: It was in the holidays season, so I thought, you know,
[1:31] Speaker 1: maybe by the end of January I would be doing
[1:36] Speaker 1: something radio related. And when that didn't happen, I'm like, okay,
[1:40] Speaker 1: well wait a second. So my next thought was, Okay,
[1:45] Speaker 1: I've got public relations experience, I could do marketing. I
[1:48] Speaker 1: have all these other things that are a part of
[1:52] Speaker 1: being in broadcasting that I could apply for.
[1:55] Speaker 2: But as weeks turned into months, Danielle started to get demoralized.
[2:00] Speaker 1: Nobody was even thinking to give me an interview after
[2:05] Speaker 1: a long time. It really your ego takes a hit.
[2:10] Speaker 2: She realized she might have to pivot.
[2:12] Speaker 1: Well, all of the rejections had gotten into the hundreds, Like,
[2:16] Speaker 1: maybe this is not working for me.
[2:20] Speaker 2: She started looking at job she'd never have considered before,
[2:23] Speaker 2: jobs outside of radio and marketing. And Danielle is one
[2:27] Speaker 2: of many job hunters right now in that position who
[2:30] Speaker 2: are navigating a uniquely challenging time in the American labor market.
[2:35] Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Mike Sasso says some of them are expanding their
[2:38] Speaker 2: job search in ways they wouldn't have expected.
[2:41] Speaker 3: I think when you do.
[2:42] Speaker 4: See people line up to be traffic flaggers, and you
[2:46] Speaker 4: hear that jobs at recyclable centers are much more easily
[2:52] Speaker 4: filled now. It's a sign that things are rough out there.
[3:00] Speaker 2: Holder, And this is the big take from Bloomberg News
[3:03] Speaker 2: Today on the show inside an unusual dynamic playing out
[3:07] Speaker 2: in one corner of the American labor market. Jobs once
[3:11] Speaker 2: considered undesirable are suddenly seeing higher applications and lower turnover. Mike'
[3:20] Speaker 2: sasso covers the economy for Bloomberg and to get a
[3:23] Speaker 2: pulse on how the economy is doing, he looks at
[3:26] Speaker 2: things like the unemployment rate, sure, but also at less
[3:30] Speaker 2: formal indicators of how real people are experiencing the economy
[3:34] Speaker 2: right now. And a few weeks back, an interesting data
[3:37] Speaker 2: point caught his eye.
[3:39] Speaker 4: Indeed, the big Giant job board just put out some
[3:43] Speaker 4: news about Christmas, Thanksgiving kind of holiday season jobs. They're
[3:50] Speaker 4: able to monitor, you know, how many people click on
[3:53] Speaker 4: seasonal job postings on Indeed, and they were showing a.
[3:57] Speaker 2: Spike, a nearly thirty cent spike year over year, and
[4:02] Speaker 2: clicks on seasonal job postings on Indeed.
[4:05] Speaker 4: Sometimes you just operate on hunches as a reporter and
[4:09] Speaker 4: seasonal jobs, by their nature are kind of your second choice.
[4:14] Speaker 3: Most people would like to have a permanent job.
[4:17] Speaker 2: So I just got the wondering, wondering if there are
[4:20] Speaker 2: other jobs that are typically hard to fill that might
[4:23] Speaker 2: now be seeing more interest.
[4:26] Speaker 4: A lot of those are blue collar oriented roles that
[4:28] Speaker 4: I happen to know that they have very high turnover rates.
[4:32] Speaker 4: They often have something that makes them less appealing, like stereotypically,
[4:38] Speaker 4: you know, the waste industry. Solid waste can be a
[4:42] Speaker 4: difficult role to fill. Traffic flaggers. You're kind of out
[4:46] Speaker 4: there flagging traffic in thirty degree weather or ninety five
[4:50] Speaker 4: degree weather, and often for twelve hours at a time.
[4:53] Speaker 4: The military, for example, it's a job that it can
[4:56] Speaker 4: be dangerous. Obviously, you can be torn away from your
[4:59] Speaker 4: family for months or a year on end if you're deployed.
[5:04] Speaker 2: So high turnover, potentially dangerous, unpleasant, temporary, and lower pay
[5:11] Speaker 2: are some of the That's pretty much.
[5:13] Speaker 3: You pretty much wrapped it up.
[5:14] Speaker 4: There was something unappealing about these jobs that would require
[5:19] Speaker 4: a second look in a kind of a weaker market,
[5:22] Speaker 4: and sure enough, there was some evidence that they are
[5:25] Speaker 4: seeing more interest and more applications.
[5:27] Speaker 2: Waste management companies are reporting higher employee retention rates. According
[5:32] Speaker 2: to the Solid Waste Giant waste Management, turnover among garbage
[5:36] Speaker 2: truck drivers is at an all time company low. Military
[5:40] Speaker 2: branches are reaching their recruiting goals ahead of schedule this year,
[5:44] Speaker 2: and traffic flagger companies who send people to direct traffic
[5:48] Speaker 2: at construction sites are having a good year too.
[5:51] Speaker 4: Two three years ago, the head of an Atlanta flagging
[5:54] Speaker 4: company was sort of lucky if he could get ten
[5:56] Speaker 4: applications a week, and so he's now getting up to
[5:59] Speaker 4: a week, which is you know what, six or sevenfold increase.
[6:03] Speaker 4: I don't want to overplay it and say that people
[6:06] Speaker 4: are lining up and banging down the door to get
[6:09] Speaker 4: into solid waste jobs or to be traffic flaggers, but
[6:12] Speaker 4: at the least they're telling me that some of the
[6:15] Speaker 4: real strain they saw from a couple of years ago
[6:17] Speaker 4: has alleviated.
[6:19] Speaker 2: The head of the Atlanta based traffic flagging company told
[6:22] Speaker 2: Mike he's gotten so much interest he's actually starting to
[6:25] Speaker 2: be more selective about who he hires.
[6:28] Speaker 4: He used to basically hire anyone who could pass a
[6:31] Speaker 4: drug test and pass a certification test three four years ago.
[6:36] Speaker 4: Now he's only able to hire fifteen percent of the
[6:39] Speaker 4: people applying to be traffic flaggers.
[6:42] Speaker 2: A fifteen percent acceptance rate is as selective as the
[6:45] Speaker 2: top us university's admissions for their first year classes. Some
[6:50] Speaker 2: of the other jobs Mike is tracking are more traditional,
[6:54] Speaker 2: but they have certain features that economists call disamenities that
[6:58] Speaker 2: make them less appealing. Jobs like substitute teaching.
[7:02] Speaker 4: It's a hard role to fill. I know they have
[7:05] Speaker 4: historically had high vacancy rates, really irregular work, generally low
[7:10] Speaker 4: pay seventeen eighteen dollars an hour.
[7:12] Speaker 3: I can remember.
[7:14] Speaker 4: Flicking staples at the substitute teachers or shooting spitballs back
[7:19] Speaker 4: in the day.
[7:20] Speaker 1: I could tell you everything I'm nervous about because it's
[7:24] Speaker 1: not in my comfort zone to be in charge of
[7:29] Speaker 1: a bunch of kids.
[7:30] Speaker 2: That's Danielle Norwood again. After she was laid off from
[7:34] Speaker 2: the local radio station, she spent months applying to job
[7:37] Speaker 2: after job, and when nobody got back to her, she
[7:40] Speaker 2: started thinking outside the box. She drove uber for a while.
[7:45] Speaker 2: She'd already been doing that to supplement her radio income,
[7:48] Speaker 2: but she found that she couldn't make a living from it,
[7:51] Speaker 2: so this summer she decided she'd apply to get her
[7:54] Speaker 2: teaching license and become a substitute teacher.
[7:57] Speaker 5: It's the only thing where the door is open.
[8:00] Speaker 1: They still need a lot of substitute teachers to help out.
[8:04] Speaker 2: She can see the disamenities clearly, no paid time off,
[8:08] Speaker 2: no health insurance, lack of consistency.
[8:11] Speaker 1: So, I mean, there's all these considerations to have to
[8:15] Speaker 1: think about, and it's like, well, do I really want
[8:18] Speaker 1: to do this and I'm not getting what I used
[8:23] Speaker 1: to get, But at the same time, I need to
[8:25] Speaker 1: check a little money is better than no money at
[8:28] Speaker 1: this particular point.
[8:29] Speaker 2: According to the latest medium wage data from the Bureau
[8:32] Speaker 2: of Labor Statistics, substitute teachers make about eighteen fifty an hour.
[8:40] Speaker 2: Coming up How the labor market got to this point
[8:44] Speaker 2: and what it means for the economy. Bloomberg's Mike Sasso
[8:56] Speaker 2: has been tracking how traditionally hard to fill jobs are
[9:00] Speaker 2: starting to get a lot more appealing. It's a sign
[9:03] Speaker 2: that employers are back in the driver's seat.
[9:06] Speaker 3: Used to be.
[9:07] Speaker 4: There was this concept about three years ago or something
[9:10] Speaker 4: was called labor hoarding, and it was basically the concept
[9:14] Speaker 4: that employers had had such a hard time filling roles
[9:17] Speaker 4: during the pandemic that even if things slowed down and
[9:21] Speaker 4: they were a little top heavy with people, they were
[9:23] Speaker 4: not going to let workers go. It was a great
[9:27] Speaker 4: time to be an employee. We saw wage rates rise
[9:30] Speaker 4: five percent a year. Pretty much. That's all gone away.
[9:33] Speaker 4: Now it's gotten ugly out there.
[9:35] Speaker 2: That ugliness in the labor market is showing up in
[9:38] Speaker 2: economic data in subtle and not so subtle waste.
[9:43] Speaker 4: The unemployment rate is somewhat Economists will say that it's
[9:46] Speaker 4: somewhat misleading because there has been this low higher low
[9:51] Speaker 4: fire phenomenon going on, which basically means there's very very
[9:55] Speaker 4: little hiring and you're seeing people sit in the unemployment
[9:59] Speaker 4: line for or six months, eight months, nine months. The
[10:03] Speaker 4: rate of hiring is actually at recessionary levels. So while
[10:08] Speaker 4: the unemployment level at four point three percent is still
[10:10] Speaker 4: fairly low, the rate at which companies are filling roles
[10:15] Speaker 4: is at recessionary levels, and so that makes it extremely
[10:18] Speaker 4: hard to get a job. There's a metric where they
[10:21] Speaker 4: study how long unemployed people have been unemployed. In about
[10:27] Speaker 4: twenty six percent of unemployed people have been out of
[10:31] Speaker 4: work for but half year.
[10:34] Speaker 3: Over a half year. Now that's a very high.
[10:36] Speaker 4: Level it's one of the highest in the past decade, excluding,
[10:39] Speaker 4: of course, the pandemic when things are off the charts.
[10:42] Speaker 4: But I think what it says, it's a sign of
[10:45] Speaker 4: how challenging it is to define work right now.
[10:50] Speaker 2: Worker's confidence about finding a new job is also waning.
[10:54] Speaker 2: A recent Harris poll conducted for Bloomberg found that nearly
[10:57] Speaker 2: half of employed respondents said it would take them four
[11:00] Speaker 2: months or more to find a job of similar quality
[11:03] Speaker 2: if they lost their jobs today. For a widening pool
[11:07] Speaker 2: of American workers, that's not a hypothetical. Companies from Amazon
[11:11] Speaker 2: and Target to Ups and Starbucks have collectively announced tens
[11:16] Speaker 2: of thousands of layoffs this year.
[11:18] Speaker 4: My colleague just did an article. He's studied something called
[11:21] Speaker 4: a warn notice. When companies make a mass layoff, they're
[11:25] Speaker 4: supposed to notify their state government, and it shows up
[11:28] Speaker 4: in these things called warn notices, And he noted that
[11:32] Speaker 4: in October nationally there were some of the highest readings
[11:36] Speaker 4: for warn notices in the past twenty years.
[11:39] Speaker 6: What we talked about earlier is the fact that the
[11:42] Speaker 6: power dynamic had switched from the hands of workers into
[11:48] Speaker 6: the hands of employers.
[11:49] Speaker 2: What would it take to actually reverse that dynamic again.
[11:53] Speaker 3: Boy, that's hard to say. I mean, you'd have to
[11:55] Speaker 3: have some shock.
[11:57] Speaker 4: I mean, certainly everyone's kind of watching immigrant right now,
[12:01] Speaker 4: and some of the data has shown a disappearance at
[12:04] Speaker 4: least from the labor roles of something like two million workers,
[12:08] Speaker 4: and there has been a lot of confusion over the
[12:12] Speaker 4: impacts of that. And suddenly, certainly, if those industries are
[12:17] Speaker 4: potentially at risk of losing a lot of manpower, that
[12:21] Speaker 4: kind of a shock to the labor market.
[12:23] Speaker 3: Competitor put power.
[12:25] Speaker 4: In the hands of workers if there's some major shortage,
[12:29] Speaker 4: I mean, that would probably be limited there as certain
[12:31] Speaker 4: roles like construction, like hospitality, you know, hotels. Of course,
[12:37] Speaker 4: those who would be likely to see it first.
[12:39] Speaker 2: In the meantime, job seekers who are flocking to jobs
[12:42] Speaker 2: that haven't always been desirable can take comfort in knowing that,
[12:46] Speaker 2: even if they're not full time with benefits, they might
[12:49] Speaker 2: have a better chance of being around for the foreseeable future.
[12:53] Speaker 2: That's because it's harder to replace them with AI. Unlike
[12:57] Speaker 2: some of the jobs that have been eliminated recently.
[12:59] Speaker 4: We have seen some companies specifically acknowledge AI and automation
[13:05] Speaker 4: being a factor, and some actually mentioned specifically targeting some
[13:10] Speaker 4: roles for automation, and so some companies seem to be
[13:15] Speaker 4: taking advantage of the increases in automation and AI right
[13:18] Speaker 4: now to reduce their costs. It's a little bit worrying
[13:22] Speaker 4: if you're caught up in that, and so we're kind
[13:24] Speaker 4: of watching to see how much of that happens as
[13:28] Speaker 4: you a passing phase.
[13:32] Speaker 2: Danielle Norwood is trying to look on the bright side.
[13:35] Speaker 2: She took her licensing exam to teach in the state
[13:37] Speaker 2: of Missouri and she just got her score back.
[13:40] Speaker 1: Which was ninety six point one five, which I was
[13:43] Speaker 1: screaming to Jesus because it was almost like for me
[13:46] Speaker 1: taking the bar. It was not an easy test to take.
[13:50] Speaker 2: She's working on getting her Kansas license now too, and
[13:53] Speaker 2: soon she'll be able to start teaching. And while subbing
[13:57] Speaker 2: is in her top pick of jobs, there are us
[14:00] Speaker 2: that Danielle says she's looking forward.
[14:02] Speaker 5: To being able to hopefully influence kids and to let
[14:06] Speaker 5: them know that there are people cheering for them and
[14:10] Speaker 5: if they have challenging situations, because I grew up in
[14:13] Speaker 5: a challenging situation too, economically, but you don't have to
[14:17] Speaker 5: be the situation you're in, you could always rise above
[14:20] Speaker 5: and push through, and I just hope to be a
[14:23] Speaker 5: lot of that for the kids that I deal with.
[14:29] Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
[14:32] Speaker 2: To get more from the Big Take and unlimited access
[14:35] Speaker 2: to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
[14:39] Speaker 2: dot com Slash podcast offer. Thanks for listening. We'll be
[14:43] Speaker 2: back tomorrow.

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