The clearest monthly read on where US hiring is headed just got gloomier, and the signal is not a wave of layoffs but the opposite: employers who have stopped both hiring and firing, leaving workers stuck in place and increasingly convinced new jobs are hard to find.
The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index fell to 106.69 in June from an upwardly revised 106.90 in May, its second straight monthly decline. The share of consumers telling the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey that “jobs are hard to get” climbed to 22.5%, the highest reading since January 2021. Initial unemployment insurance claims averaged 222,000 in June, the largest monthly average so far this year, while the share of small firms reporting unfilled positions rose three points to 32%. Temporary help employment added 47,800 jobs across the first half of 2026 even as permanent hiring stayed largely frozen.
“The ETI declined a second consecutive month in June, suggesting slower payroll growth ahead,” said Jannik Schulz, an economic research associate at the Conference Board, adding that the data “show persistent labor market resilience as firms continue to limit hiring and separations, while few workers are quitting.”
That freeze cuts both ways for workforce planning teams. A market where employers neither hire nor fire looks stable on a headcount report, but it masks a talent pool that is not moving: internal mobility becomes the main lever for closing skills gaps, since external recruitment has slowed and voluntary attrition has too. It also reinforces, from the outside, the same workforce efficiency math already reshaping HRIS investment decisions, the push to raise revenue per employee rather than add headcount. HR leaders building 2027 workforce plans should treat “low hire, low fire” as a baseline scenario rather than a temporary lull, and lean on internal talent marketplaces and skills data to move people, since this data gives little reason to expect a hiring rebound soon.
Source: The Conference Board
