Public Insight’s February 2025 Jobs Report summarizes market insights from the millions of job postings, resumé updates and employer ratings/reviews available in our TalentView platform in addition to broader labor and macroeconomic indicators.
Summary
- Compared to January, job posting volume in February declined 19.5% to 2.72 million and declined 18.5% vs. February 2024.
- Fill days average across the last 12 months increased from 46.7 to 47.8 days.
- February compensation increased 1.9% and is up 9.7% over the trailing twelve months.
- Sectors with strong February comp growth include Technology, Financial Services, and Retail.
- The number of unique new published resumes decreased 12.5% in February compared to January.
- Overall supply and demand shows an oversupply of seekers to positions. The Administrative and Support Services sector changed to heavy unmet demand in February.
- Worker sentiment analysis indicated Positive Business Outlook declined to a 14-month low.
Job Posting Summary
- Compared to January, job posting volume in February declined 19.5% to 2.72 million and declined 18.5% vs. February 2024.
- Volume declines ranged across industry sectors with exception of Administrative and Support Services. Accommodation Services experienced the largest month-over-month decline and Professional Services experiencing the largest year-over-year decline.
- Fill Days measured over the trailing twelve months increased from 46.7 days to 47.8 days. Further, the percentage of ads that are filled over the trailing twelve months declined from 87% to 84%. This is an indicator that the market is ever so slightly tightening.
- Further evidence of a potential tightening is the decline of the use of the Apply on Indeed or the Quick Apply button. This declined below 60% for the first time in fourteen months.
- Open Days has remained steady at 67 days measured using the trailing nine months. However, the number of ads open has increased to nearly 21% over that time period, a sizable jump from 17% in December.
Posting Volume
February job postings declined 19.5% from January to 2.72 million and declined 18.5% vs. February 2024. Weekly postings have been going through a roller coaster ride with fluctuations between 505,000 in the second week of February to 790,000 the third week of February. The last two weeks of the month produced 56% of the monthly activity.
Volume declines ranged across the leading industry sectors with exception of Administrative and Support Services which increased nearly 4% compared to last year. Accommodation Services experienced the largest month-over-month decline of 31% while Professional Services experienced the highest year-over-year decline of 26%.
Among major metropolitan areas, Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Portland, Oregon had the largest year-over-year and month-over-month declines. While many people are expecting a hit in the belt around District of Columbia, it has not fully materialized in job posting volume. These metro areas are still experiencing posting volume consistent with the rest of the country.
Sponsorship rates held steady at 14%. However the number of ads enabled with the Indeed Quick Apply button declined to below 60% for the first time since we started tracking this indicator. It is possible that employers are slowing down the application process. This is especially noticeable when coupled with urgency rates of near zero.
Fill Days
Fill days use ad expiration and ad removal to determine a presumptive hire. When measured over a prolonged period of time and over millions of postings it provides a strong glimpse of the overall market. The trailing twelve months is used as a time period for our analysis. We now eliminate stale or evergreen postings which are defined as those postings older than one year.
In the graph below, we show the fill days by month along with the percentage of ads (blue line) that have been filled. Obviously, the newer ads have a lower fill rate and because they are the earliest jobs filled, they typically have longer fill days.
Fill days as an average over 12 months increased slightly from 46.7 days in December to 47.8 days for February. Further, the percentage of ads that are filled over the trailing twelve months declined from 87% to 84%. This again is an indicator that the market is ever so slightly tightening.
Open Days
Open days are postings that are still determined to be open. We track every job posting uniquely and ascertain its fill status on a weekly basis. Generally, we have found that nine months to be a suitable time horizon to evaluate the age of open days. Older postings may distort the open days as they may represent “evergreen” postings. For this reason we eliminate implied evergreen ads that are older than one year.
The graph below shows the aging of open postings for the past nine months. This value has held fairly steady, ranging from 64 to 67 days. The current number of open postings reflected in the graph is 2.8 million. The composite aging of open postings is 67 days representing 21% of all postings during this period. The blue line shows the percentage of ads for that month that are still open.
COMPENSATION SUMMARY
- February compensation increased 1.9% and is up 9.7% over the trailing twelve months.
- Compensation range as a percentage of the midpoint compensation increased to a 12-month high of 26.1%. This continues an ongoing trend from previous months.
- Sectors with strong February comp growth include Technology, Financial Services, and Retail.
Compensation Composite
Mid-posted compensation increased 1.9% in February to $68,300 on a composite basis across all job postings. Compensation has now increased 9.7% over the trailing twelve months. In addition as highlighted by the graph below, the range between the max and min posted values has increased as a percentage to a twelve-month high of 26.1%. This suggests that employers are giving themselves more negotiating room for advertised compensation.
Compensation by Industry Sector
- Sectors experiencing meaningful wage growth in February include Technology (8.1%), Financial Services (4.9%), and Retail (3.3%). Technology and Financial Services improvements is encouraging considering the challenges that these sectors experienced in 2024.
- The Transportation sector, after recent positive movement declined 1.5% but is still significantly up over the past year.
Supply and Demand Summary
- Resumes declined 12.5% in February from the normal year-end resume updates.
- While supply/demand as a whole remained relatively unchanged, certain sectors have tilted increasingly towards unmet demand, notably Technology, Financial Services, Transportation, and Administrative and Support Services.
Resumes
The number of unique resumes that were published on the Indeed platform decreased 12.5% in February. The number of resumes published was the third lowest in the last 12 months. This is expected given the high volume of resumes published in December 2024 and January 2025.
The number of resumes published during the past year is 50 million compared to the number of unique (net) positions of 34.5 million resulting in the tilt of our supply and demand towards supply abundance.
Supply/Demand Chart
To highlight supply/demand imbalances, we superimpose job seekers based on resumés against net job positions (hires based on unique postings) shown in the black bar. We can then look at this supply and demand in diverse ways. The graphs highlight supply surplus (more job seekers than net postings) shown in green or supply shortage (less job seekers than net postings) shown in red. We picked a time period of nine months, which highlights the current market surplus or shortage. The total bar reflects the summaries of openings and resumés for that time period.
Supply/Demand Scorecard
We highlight the current state at the end of February as well as the most recent changes over the last quarter. A change is not necessarily good or bad, but we have highlighted (orange text) changes in supply/demand gaps that significantly impact the current trends.
For the most part, there has not been a meaningful shift of workers, unlike the last time we examined this data at the end of the year. However, where there has been movement the tilt has been increasing towards a shortage of workers. Amazingly Technology and Financial Services have now tilted back from oversupply to unmet demand after the layoffs and challenges of 2024.
| Sector | Current State | Previous State |
| Hospitals and Health Care | Heavy Unmet Demand | Heavy Unmet Demand |
| Accommodation Services | Moderate Oversupply | Moderate Oversupply |
| Retail | Moderate Oversupply | Moderate Oversupply |
| Professional Services | Parity | Parity |
| Manufacturing | Moderate Oversupply | Moderate Oversupply |
| Transportation, Logistics, … | Slight Unmet Demand | Parity |
| Construction | Parity | Parity |
| Technology, Information, … | Slight Unmet Demand | Moderate Oversupply |
| Financial Services | Slight Unmet Demand | Slight Oversupply |
| Education | Slight Oversupply | Slight Oversupply |
| Consumer Services | Moderate Oversupply | Moderate Oversupply |
| Entertainment Providers | Moderate Oversupply | Moderate Oversupply |
| Wholesale | Slight Oversupply | Slight Oversupply |
| Administrative and Support Services | Heavy Unmet Demand | Moderate Unmet Demand |
Worker Sentiment Summary
- Net Promoter Score remained flat at 15.5, but barely above 14-month lows.
- Positive business outlook and CEO approval dip into 14-month lows.
Net Promoter Score Stays at the Bottom
Net Promoter Score (NPS) after bottoming out last fall has meandered barely above the low water mark of 2024. Net Promoter Score is measured based on the percentage of positive reviews over negative reviews. A score of 15.8 out of 100 means there are only marginally more “fans” than there are “detractors.”
More concerning in our analysis of reviews is the decline of worker sentiment around business outlook (see graph below) and CEO approval. Business outlook declined to a 14-month low as shown in the following graph.
Labor Market Summary
- Job Openings were up 3.1% in January to 7.7 million. Job openings are 8.4% above the September 2024 low point of 7.1 million jobs.
- Job Hires were flat in January to 5.4 million and 5.9% above the June 2024 low point of 5.1 million jobs and 21% below the peak of 6.8 million in early 2022.
- Layoffs and Discharges remain at historical lows and have declined for four straight months.
- Quit rates recently crept back up after steadily declining during much of 2023 and 2024. The quit rate currently stands at 2.1% just above the low point of 1.9%.
- Unemployment rates ticked up in January from 3.9% to 4.4% but still well below historical standards.
Get More Insights!
Try Our Free Version of TalentView to Get Instant Compensation, Postings, and Fill Days Insights By Title, Company and Location (No Sign Up Required)
How Would Your Company, Competitors, Industry, and Job Titles Compare?
You’ve seen overall job market insights for last month. Now, wouldn’t you want these insights for your specific industry, job titles, locations and to compare against your competitors?
What is TalentView?
Public Insight develops TalentView, a talent market intelligence solution that generated these insights. The most current and detailed insights are available by title, employer, location, industry and more. We provide flexible ways to utilize talent market intelligence, which include interactive dashboards, reports, analytics feeds and data integration via API.
How Can Our Must-Have Insights Help You?
- Inform/Justify Recruiting Decisions and Prepare For Hiring Manager Discussions
- Inform Recruitment Marketing Budgets, Strategies and Priorities
- Benchmark Employers Against Competitors
- Identify Business Development Opportunities (Solution Providers)
- Develop Content for Account Management and Marketing (Solution Providers)
Get Started!
Schedule a Call – Let’s discuss and demonstrate how you can leverage job/talent market insights
Sign Up for a Trial – Try out our interactive dashboards or get sample data for proof of concept
