To see what an economic soft landing looks like, search no further than business hiring.

Parts of the economy are cooling, just as the Federal Reserve would like to see to combat inflation. Freight railroads, for instance, are seeing shipping volumes decline. Construction firms are cutting back on equipment purchases. A vending-machine company’s customers are negotiating prices downward.

Yet the key to a measured, inflation-busting slowdown that doesn’t sink the economy lies in whether companies hold on to workers or lay them off. And the answer, in an economy that otherwise can send repeated mixed signals, is clear: They are making a priority of keeping workers. Apple, for one, is avoiding layoffs despite economic uncertainty.

Many economists, financiers and business owners predicted the opposite: that inflation and high interest rates would prompt companies to fire workers, the newly unemployed would stop spending and the economy would spiral downward. 

The desire to hold on to workers, if at all possible, is a change from 2007-09 and 2020, when steep layoffs were more commonplace and the U.S. economy moved into a recession.