As Arias and other jobseekers can attest, the American labor market, red-hot for the past few years, has cooled. The job market is now in an unusual place: Jobholders are mostly secure, with layoffs low, historically speaking. Yet the pace of hiring has slowed, and landing a job has become harder. On Friday, the government will report on whether hiring slowed sharply again in August after a much-weaker-than-expected July job gain.

“If you have a job and you’re happy with that job and you want to hold onto that job, things are pretty good right now,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “But if you’re out of work or you have a job and you want to switch to a new one, things aren’t as rosy as they were a couple of years ago.’’

Since peaking in March 2022 as the economy accelerated out of the pandemic recession, the number of listed job openings has dropped by more than a third, according to the government’s latest monthly report on openings and hiring.