Job security jitters are on the rise. And why not? Recession chatter is all over the news (guilty ✋).
The job market is still strong, with unemployment at a near-record low of 3.6% — but the Federal Reserve wants to drive that up a bit to fight inflation. Workers have gotten the message.
Across all income brackets, the share of workers who fear a loss of employment income over the next month rose in June from the prior month, according to polling from the Morning Consult/Axios Inequality Index.
- In the lower-income group, that’s a reversal from May when job loss expectations trended down.
- Among those in the higher-income group, the share expecting job loss jumped by more than 5 percentage points — to its highest level in the last year (15.7%).
Especially in the higher-income group, the fears don’t yet line up with reality. The number of higher-income respondents who said they actually lost employment income in the prior four weeks was just 7%, basically unchanged from May.
"I think the feeling is just that something's not right about the economy, and it's starting to spook workers," says Jesse Wheeler, Morning Consult economic analyst.