Why "No Layoffs" Doesn't Mean a Healthy Hiring Market

Here's something that doesn't add up at first glance. Layoffs are low right now. Companies aren't cutting people. So why does it feel nearly impossible to get hired?

I've been watching this play out with clients for months, and the short answer is that job security and job opportunity have come apart from each other. If you already have a job, you're probably fine. If you're trying to land one, whether you just graduated, you're switching careers, or you got caught in a targeted layoff somewhere, you're dealing with something that looks a lot more like a recession.

A workforce briefing from Kelly Services put numbers to this on April 21. Hiring had dropped to its lowest rate outside the pandemic, and layoffs stayed low at the same time. That combination is strange. Usually when hiring slows, layoffs are rising too and the whole market is contracting together. This time companies are holding onto the people they've got and just not bringing anyone new in.

You can see who gets hurt by that. Recent grads between 22 and 27 had a 5.6% unemployment rate in that same briefing, compared to 4.2% nationally. If you're 23 and job hunting right now, the numbers back up what it feels like.

Here's the part that surprised me a little. SHRM reported on April 20 that 68% of HR professionals said they were still having trouble recruiting full-time employees, and 53% said it had gotten harder than a year ago. That seems like it should contradict the low-hire story. If hiring is slow, how are companies also struggling to fill the roles they do have open?

SHRM's answer is that this isn't really a shortage of people. It's a mismatch. Companies want very specific skills, and they're not always willing to pay, train, or compromise enough to actually get them. So a job posting can sit open for months, not because nobody applied, but because nobody who applied checked every box at the price the company had in mind.

A lot of what's driving this comes down to how companies are approaching hiring decisions, not whether they actually need the people. Requisitions get frozen or sit waiting for approval for months. Job descriptions get written for a candidate who basically doesn't exist. Interviews stretch out to five or six rounds when two would do. Pay bands haven't kept up with what good candidates expect. And somewhere along the way, someone keeps pushing the final decision back another week.

None of that is free. Every week a critical role stays open costs something, whether it's delayed revenue, a stalled project, or the team that's already stretched thin picking up more slack. Ironically, the caution meant to protect the business can end up burning out the very people it was supposed to protect, and quietly wrecking succession plans in the process.

So what actually works here? I don't think it's hiring more. I think it's hiring smarter for the roles that genuinely move the needle. That means being honest about which positions are truly strategic instead of treating every open seat with the same level of caution. It means looking hard at why a role needs six layers of approval and cutting that down. It means being open to candidates with adjacent skills instead of waiting for a perfect match that may never show up. And it often means leaning on people who specialize in filling hard roles, because trying to do it all internally with a slow process just extends the pain.

Low layoffs sound like good news, and in some ways they are. But a market where the employed are safe and everyone else is stuck isn't a healthy one. The companies that figure this out now, and fix how they're making hiring decisions, are going to be the ones ready to move when things open back up.

Sources: Kelly Services, Need to Know Briefing, April 21, 2026; SHRM, Rethinking Talent: HR Must Build, Not Just Buy