As firms reported their newest quarterly earnings in latest weeks, hiring, wages and head counts had been widespread subjects as analysts quizzed executives about their plans.

Some mentioned they had been avoiding increasing their payrolls as quickly as previously. Others mentioned that rising wages remained a fear for his or her backside traces. And many nonetheless trying to rent mentioned that attracting and retaining staff was tough because the labor market remained strong.

“You have to work extra to hire people and to keep people,” Andrew Watterson, the chief working officer of Southwest Airlines, mentioned on a name with analysts. “Our clients still grapple with labor shortages,” mentioned Martine Ferland, who runs the consultancy Mercer.

Even so, the speed of staff quitting their jobs, a measure of staff’ confidence of their prospects and bargaining energy, continued to fall in June, in response to knowledge launched Tuesday. “If you think about our turnover coming down, that means we don’t have as many people we’re hiring as we were before,” mentioned Rick Cardenas, the chief government of Darden Restaurants, proprietor of the Olive Garden chain.

Wage development has additionally cooled in latest months, however remained robust last month, rising 4.4 % from a 12 months earlier. “We still face above normal levels of wage and benefit cost inflation in our cost structure,” Andre Schulten, the finance chief on the client items firm Procter & Gamble, mentioned on a name with analysts.

Kathryn A. Mikells, the chief monetary officer of Exxon Mobil, mentioned that the oil large had seen decrease costs for a few of its supplies like chemical compounds and sand, however “as it relates to things where labor is a high component of the cost, I would say we’re not yet necessarily seeing that deflationary pressure coming through yet.”

Anthony Wood, the chief government of Roku, the streaming gadget maker, instructed analysts that the corporate would proceed hiring, however deliberate to take action outdoors of the United States, in locations the place staff “are just less expensive than Silicon Valley engineers.”

Other firms, particularly within the tech business, mentioned that they’d change into extra considered about hiring, with some freezing payrolls and even slicing jobs.

Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, which minimize tens of 1000’s of jobs in multiple rounds of layoffs since late final 12 months, mentioned final week that “newly budgeted head count growth is going to be relatively low” on the firm, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Sundar Pichai of Alphabet mentioned that the tech large would “continue to slow our expense growth and pace of hiring.”