The job market is heating up — for jobs that people usually don’t want

Jobseekers can’t be choosy in today’s stalling US labor market. Even when the job is flagging traffic for 12 hours in the Atlanta sun.

Two years ago, the chief executive officer of AQC Traffic Control fielded around 10 applications a week for long shifts directing motorists to stop or slow down near construction sites, braving both the summer heat and the winter cold. Today, Marcus Rush is seeing up to 80.

“When my office phone rings, my ears perk up because I wonder if it’s a new customer,” Rush said. “Now, every time I hear a phone ring, it’s someone calling in to check on a job application. That never used to happen.”

From substitute teachers to prison guards, staffing agencies and employers are reporting a pickup in applicants for roles often shunned for their low pay, inconsistent hours or unpleasant conditions. Even the messy work at materials recovery facilities, where people still sort recyclables partly by hand, is fetching more takers.

With fewer businesses hiring, nearly half of employed Americans in a recent Harris Poll conducted for Bloomberg News said it would take them four months or more to find a job of similar quality if they lost their jobs today. That offers employers who have traditionally struggled to fill roles the upper hand, especially for those still reeling from rampant vacancies and a 27% gain in wages since the onset of the pandemic.

“In 2022, it was darn near impossible to find workers,” said Rick Hermanns, CEO at staffing firm HireQuest Inc., which recruits for recycling centers among other industries. Today, “that really isn’t the case.”

The job-hopping days of the Covid-19 era, dubbed the Great Resignation, have given way to the so-called “low hire, low fire” economy. However, a recent rash of layoff announcements suggest companies have lost their fear of firing.

While overall the jobless rate remained fairly low at 4.3% in August - the latest data available - those out of work are lingering in unemployment for longer. Almost 26% of unemployed workers that month had been out of work for more than half a year, one of the highest shares in a decade, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Danielle Norwood is among them. The 53-year-old radio veteran spent the last three years of her career hosting a show in Topeka, Kansas until the station let her go last fall. After a brief stint as an Uber driver and countless unanswered job applications, she’s now working toward getting her substitute teacher certification. She’s leery of the horror stories, having recently read about a sub who got “kicked in the gut,” but the pay’s OK at $140 to $200 a day and she’s excited to make a difference.

“Kids don’t have the boundaries,” Norwood said. “But I think I can handle it. And financially, this is the only way I can see forward.”

In fact, firms that help school districts fill substitute teacher spots report more applicants per role lately. After a sharp drop in available subs during the pandemic, the pool eventually rebounded to around pre-Covid levels, according to a 2024 blog post by education staffing firm Edustaff. However, shortages persisted because many of the remaining subs cut back on accepting assignments and were turned off by low pay and only sporadic work, Edustaff said. Substitute teachers make about $18.50 an hour, according to the latest median wage data from the BLS.

Today, the Kansas City area’s Morgan Hunter staffing firm, which has a substitute teaching unit, has seen “our best year for hiring since Covid,” education program director Angela Hunt said in an email. The weak economy is one of a few reasons for the pickup, she said. Staffing giant Kelly Services Inc., which fills almost 6 million substitute teaching assignments a year, has also seen more applications this year, although they attribute it to professionals wanting to try education after tiring of other fields.

Likewise, firms with jobs that sometimes go begging in stronger job markets are seeing some of the best recruiting in years.

Waste Management Inc. and some of its competitors have reported better employee retention in recent earnings calls, with the Houston-based firm boasting on a call last month that turnover among garbage truck driver and technician roles “is at an all-time company low.” To be sure, recent automation of certain tasks has allowed it to keep some hard-to-fill jobs vacant.

And at materials recovery facilities - which sort homeowners’ blue-box recyclables, often using day laborers - interest from jobseekers is also higher. In HireQuest’s division that includes waste management and recycling facilities, the number of job applications per opening is up as much as 50% from a couple years ago. That’s a result of more applicants overall, as well as a reduction in open positions, a spokesperson said.

“We can fill those roles, where three years ago we would’ve been hard-pressed if a waste company called us and said, ‘we need 30 people,’” HireQuest’s Hermanns said.

In the notoriously high-turnover corrections industry, one large operator, the Georgia Department of Corrections, reports receiving more than a thousand applications in each of the past three months for all roles, including correctional officers. That’s up more than 40% from a year ago. A spokesperson for the agency attributed the interest to more advertising and job fairs.

And the US military, which can be a tough sell because of the risk of danger and separation from family, is hitting its recruiting targets again, said Beth Asch, a senior principal economist who specializes in defense manpower at the think tank RAND. In 2022, the Army missed its goal by 25%, but now it and other branches report reaching their marks ahead of schedule.

“A consistent finding is when the economy gets a little worse, when the unemployment rate rises, you get an increase in enlistments in the military,” Asch said, adding that recent pay raises probably also played a role.

Nowadays, Rush is able to command employees with traffic flagging experience, whereas a couple years ago he hired almost everyone who passed a drug test and a flagging certification. Among them is Ieshia Jones, 36, a 15-year flagging veteran who joined Rush’s firm six weeks ago.

“A lot of people just can’t stand being outside in the cold or heat,” Jones said. “I love it, honestly. It makes me feel like I’m a part of something.”

Rush graduated from Stanford University with an MBA in 2020, purchasing AQC Traffic Control a year later. He’s only able to hire 15% of the workers who apply for flagging jobs these days, and chuckled when told he’s almost as selective as Stanford is in selecting first-year students.

“I never expected we would be in the position we’re in now,” Rush said.