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Top executives from benefits providers and benefits brokers are telling investors that, for now, at least, the U.S. labor market still looks pretty good.
Richard McKenney, the chief executive officer of Unum Group, a big provider of group disability insurance and worksite benefits, said the environment for the company's business continues to be very good.
"I think that, in this quarter, we happen to see that payrolls looked good and looked strong," McKenney said Wednesday, during a conference call Unum held to go over earnings for the second quarter, which ended June 30.
Competition for new business is fierce, but customer retention rates are strong, especially for employers that are using Unum's human resources platform to manage their benefits programs, McKenney said.
McKenney said he believes the overall benefits pricing environment appears to be rational.
Hartford Financial executives and Principal Financial have talked during their own second-quarter analyst calls about seeing strong persistency levels and tough competition for new sales during their calls.
J. Patrick Gallagher, the CEO of Arthur J. Gallagher, said the company is watching carefully for any signs of an economic downturn.
But, for now, "within the U.S., we are seeing continued job growth, just not quite at the robust levels we saw during 2024," Gallagher said.
Willis executives said the firm's benefits brokerage and consulting arms see high health care cost inflation in North America increasing employer demand for cost-cutting projects.
Executives at CBIZ, a company that provides a wide range of accounting and business support services, along with benefits consulting services, expressed more concern about the state of the economy.
"Given the current and anticipated economic climate, we've accelerated several significant cost control initiatives," CBIZ CEO Jerry Grisko said. "We've expedited a number of integration-related decisions, including workforce integration."
Because of workforce integration, CBIZ now has 450 fewer full-time equivalent employees than it had a year ago, Grisko said.
CBIZ is seeing relatively stable levels for core business support services, but it sees employers postponing the start of projects.
All of the companies streamed their second-quarter analyst calls live and posted links to recordings in the investor relations sections on their websites.
The backdrop: Benefits sector executives predicted in April and May, when they were holding conference calls for the first quarter, that their typical employer customers would hold steady, in spite of the stock market volatility and other effects of efforts by the administration of President Donald Trump to impose taxes on imports and negotiate tougher trade deals.
Related: Employee leasing firm sees health costs climbing 9% after benefits cuts
The companies suggested that benefit plan sponsors could do better than the overall economy because employers with solid employer-paid benefits tend to be older and more stable than the typical business.
What it means: Workers looking for jobs know that finding a good job in this economy can be challenging, but labor market softening is not yet intense enough to cast a shadow over benefits firms' analyst calls.
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