America’s Hot Labour Market Fuels Job Growth in Unexpected Places
Payroll increase extends to building, home selling and auto making
3 min
The U.S. labor market is showing surprising pockets of strength as companies directly in the crosshairs of rising interest rates hold on to or add workers.
Builders, architects and engineers, real-estate agents, vehicle manufacturers and other businesses typically sensitive to higher borrowing costs have increased employment during the opening months of 2023.
Those job gains, along with much larger increases in industries still trying to claw back workers lost during the pandemic, have added up to almost 1.6 million jobs in the first five months of 2023, outpacing economists’ forecasts.
The Labor Department will release June jobs figures on Friday.
“The labor market has continually surprised,” said Daniel Zhao, lead economist for the research team at Glassdoor, an online employment site.
Robust hiring defies theFederal Reserve
The strong job gains come despite companies and consumers facing higher borrowing costs.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to a 16-year high in 2023. And it is expected to increase them further later this year as part of a campaign to slow the economy, cool the labor market and tamp down inflation that is running too hot.
Some industries are defying the Fed’s efforts.
Construction employment has been one of the biggest surprises in recent months. In the past, builders have been hit especially hard when interest rates rose.
But employment in residential construction has merely levelled off in 2023, while industrial and infrastructure businesses gallop ahead.
Projects related to electric-vehicle batteries and semiconductors are driving much of the growth, spurred in part by the Chips and Science Act of 2022, which set aside $52.7 billion for financial assistance for the construction and expansion of semiconductor manufacturing facilities and other programs.
“Many of these were announced or broke ground before the Chips Act, but that added fuel to the bonfire,” said Kenneth Simonson, chief economist at Associated General Contractors of America.
Architectural and engineering firms have also added workers. The real-estate industry hasn’t shed any jobs this year despite a slowdown in single-family home sales.
American factories also often get caught in the Fed’s crosshairs when costs go up for auto loans and other personal loans. But auto and parts manufacturers have added almost 20,000 workers so far in 2023, helping to offset losses at makers of furniture, plastics and paper products.
According to Commerce Department data, car sales are still below pre pandemic levels, held back by limited supplies and high prices. But figures from the Fed show factories are trying to catch up. Auto and light-truck assemblies were above an annual pace of 11 million in April and May, the first time that number has been topped in back-to-back months since 2018.
Some employers stabilise, others heat up
The story is similar in other corners of the economy. Home-improvement and furniture stores have shed workers, for example, but department stores and warehouse clubs have added them. The final result: Overall retail employment has grown slightly so far this year.
The financial sector has also posted growth despite banking sector turmoil, with gains at insurers, brokers and financial advisers outpacing losses in banking.
Other sectors aren’t merely holding up—they are rapidly hiring. Government, leisure and hospitality and healthcare account for about 60% of all employment gains so far in 2023. The first two categories are still playing Covid-19 catch-up: Employment at restaurants, hotels, schools and in other municipal services are still below pre pandemic levels.
The picture isn’t entirely rosy.
Tech layoffs are well documented. Some economists worry that residential construction employment could be headed for a fall as a big run-up in apartment projects leads to an oversupply of units and signs of falling rents.
The number of hours people are spending on the job is declining, a possible sign that employers have less work for them. Wage growth remains strong but has eased, suggesting that demand for workers is cooling. And job growth has become more concentrated in fewer industries, possibly indicating that the breadth of the economic expansion is also narrowing.
“There are signals on the periphery that the labor market is slowing,” said Brett Ryan, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank.
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
The 1860s Darlinghurst mansion Stoneleigh could become Sydney’s most expensive home ever sold under the hammer when it goes to auction. Clint Ballard is giving buyers a $28 million guide for the heritage-listed mansion on Darley Street, opposite Iona, the former home of Hollywood royalty Baz Luhrmann. Stoneleigh is being offered for sale for the …
Set on one of the city’s last absolute riverfront sites, The Riversdale by Mosaic combines irreplaceable waterfront ownership with one of Brisbane’s most significant residential opportunities.
Gold miners are emerging as a compelling way to navigate market uncertainty, with analysts pointing to strong cash flows, attractive valuations and rising profit margins. As gold prices stabilize above US$4,000 an ounce, mining stocks could offer investors both downside protection and long-term upside.
3 min
Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.
The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.
Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.
Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.
Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.
These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.
Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.
Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.
Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.
“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.
“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.
Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.
“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.
That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.
“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.
They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.
An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.
What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.
One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.
But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.
From mud baths to herbal massages, Fiji’s heat rituals turned one winter escape into a soul-deep reset.
In the lead-up to the country’s biggest dog show, a third-generation handler prepares a gaggle of premier canines vying for the top prize.
