Employees are becoming increasingly pessimistic about how well their employers will fare over the next six months, and ongoing fears about hiring freezes and layoffs are partly to blame. 

Workers’ confidence in their employer’s expected performance over the next six months fell to 45.6% in January, according to company review platform Glassdoor’s most recent Employee Confidence Index. While it’s only a relatively small drop from December’s confidence reading of 47.5%, it’s the lowest number since Glassdoor started tracking worker sentiment in January 2016.

Managers and entry-level employees are fairly aligned when it comes to how confident they are in their company over the near term, but they differ significantly from top executives. While 64.9% of senior employees at the director level or higher reported being confident in their employer’s six-month outlook, just 48.9% of mid-senior level workers and 48.8% of entry-level staffers said the same. 

Concerns about hiring freezes may be affecting employee optimism. More companies implemented hiring freezes in 2023, up 81% from the year prior, according to Glassdoor. And many businesses will likely follow suit this year, as 52% of more than 900 executives surveyed by ResumeBuilder in December said they planned to pause hiring in 2024. Hiring or lack thereof is “one of the most visible indicators that employees have of a company’s business performance,” writes Daniel Zhao, a lead economist at Glassdoor. 

“Hiring freezes are a signal of uncertainty to employees, just like layoffs and high turnover,” Zhao writes.

Concerns over layoffs may also be contributing to workers’ pessimism. The share of reviews on Glassdoor mentioning layoffs grew 27% year-over-year in January, and recent data from career consulting firm Challenger, Grey & Christmas shows 82,307 job cuts in January, a 136% increase from the month before. With the exception of January 2023, that’s the highest number of cuts since January of 2009.

Workers are finding that locking down a job these days is becoming increasingly difficult. While job postings remain higher than before the pandemic, total openings listed at the end of 2023 fell 15% year-over-year, according to Indeed. Employees were less eager to leave their jobs last year, and job seekers openly lamented applying to as many as 500 job openings to no avail. While January produced a blockbuster jobs report that may sway public opinion, workers have so far been getting mixed messages, and seem hesitant to embrace labor market optimism. 

Managers in particular feel pressured by layoffs, as many staff reductions in the past year including at Meta, were intended to flatten the organization and reduce unnecessary hierarchies.
“Ongoing layoffs have targeted layers of middle management as companies attempt to reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency, putting more strain on middle managers,” writes Zhao.

Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion

Around the Table

A round-up of the most important HR headlines.

- Britain once had 15 “working royals”—but after death, resignation, and disgrace, they’re down to 11, with domestic engagements waning 40% over the last decade. —Wall Street Journal

- Labor unions are planning a rally against autonomous car service Waymo’s expansion into California. —NBC News

- U.S. workers are unhappy in their careers because they feel less hope for a better position or pay raise. —Bloomberg

- Trucking, warehousing, and parcel delivery companies have added 10,700 jobs since December last year. —Wall Street Journal

Watercooler

Everything you need to know from Fortune.

Doomsday denier. Bank of England chief Andrew Bailey is tossing aside AI job replacement worries and says economies will adapt to technological advances. —Ryan Hogg

Ryanair rentals. Ryanair recently bought 25 homes near its Dublin headquarters to house its new hires due to the city’s tough rent crisis. —Irina Ivanova

Layoff fears. Recent high-profile job cuts have concentrated on a few key sectors, including technology, finance, and media. But the labor market is still seeing lots of job growth. —Christopher Rugaber, AP