The big monthly jobs report came out last Thursday before the holiday weekend, and it was surprisingly strong — at least considering what economists were expecting. Nearly 150,000 new jobs were added to payrolls in June, mostly in health care and state and local government.

The report also showed unemployment fell back to 4.1% as fewer people were in the labor market chasing jobs. All well and good, but it doesn’t tell us what the future might hold.

For that, The Conference Board has its Employment Trends Index. It comes out just after the BLS jobs report and crunches together a bunch of data points to try to anticipate what’s coming.

The Conference Board aggregates eight different labor market indicators, including first-time jobless claims, involuntary part-time work and sentiment about how easy it is for workers to find jobs and employers to find workers. 

In June, the ETI held steady. Conference Board senior economist Yelena Shulyatyeva said overall, the labor market remains solid.

“I don’t think it’s going to go and drop off a cliff. But I do see continued slowdown to a point at which we may see an increase in the unemployment rate by the year-end,” she said.

Frank Fiorille, vice president of risk and compliance at small-business payroll processor Paychex, said the word he would use is “frozen.”

“There’s not a lot of hiring, but there’s not a lot of firing either,” he said.

What’s going on with employers, said Shulyatyeva at The Conference Board, is a "great hesitation” to grow or shrink their payrolls — really to do much of anything right now.

“Companies are just waiting to see whether the uncertainty surrounding tariffs and other things is lifted,” she said.

Meaning, if workers have a choice, they’re probably better off staying put in their jobs, said Andrew Flowers at recruiting-tech firm Appcast. He describes this as an “insider-friendly” market.

“And by insider I mean: If you already have a job, things are pretty good. Layoffs are fairly low, wage growth outpacing inflation,” he said.

But if you’re an outsider trying to find work?

“It’s very difficult. The job-finding rate, the probability you move from being unemployed to employed, has been falling steadily for awhile,” Flowers said.

What recruiters are mostly looking to fill right now are what he calls ‘standing up’ jobs: blue-collar and service-sector work in healthcare, bars and restaurants, construction. 

He said at the moment, landing white-collar professional jobs is way harder.