There are two Americas in 2024: the one for people with jobs, homes and stock portfolios, and the one for everyone else. The latest example of the two-track economy comes via this week’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which revealed that US hiring fell in March to one of the weakest rates in the past decade. That’s making a bad situation worse for a generation of young people just starting to build wealth.

Unemployment has stayed low at 3.8% because companies aren’t firing workers and very few are quitting. But at 3.5 hires per 100 current employees, the anemic rate of onboarding is closer to what the US experienced a decade ago during the long “jobless recovery” from the global financial crisis — an uninviting prospect for those struggling to rebound from a round of layoffs or entering the labor market for the first time (including forthcoming or recent Generation Z graduates).