Why Are Workers Stuck? Not Enough Employers

America is not, according to the official definition, in a recession. And yet the American labor market is so weak that it raises an obvious question: What’s the difference? More precisely, how is today’s labor market different from the labor market during a recession?

Maybe it’s not so obvious. In the 18 years since the US economy last made the transition from expansion to contraction (as opposed to the abrupt shock of the pandemic), the labor market — and the understanding of it — have changed. The pain that was generally thought to be limited to recessions is much more pervasive than commonly realized, because recessions aren’t the only cause of constrained mobility in the labor market. There’s now a different source: employer concentration.