What You Don’t Know About the US Job Market Can Hurt You
Keep up with the latest hiring trends by viewing our recorded October Jobs Report webinar. These insights will empower you to make critical year-end decisions for your organization. Each month, we unveil the latest Job Report data in our Monthly Job Report Webinar. Public Insight provides meaningful insights about the US labor market and hiring trends. Shortly after the numbers are released, we view the data on our Insight for Work analysis platform, transforming the data into useful insights. Then we share it with our followers in our free monthly webinar.
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October Hiring at Pre-Pandemic Levels, but Challenges Remain
Indeed job posting activity has sustained a six-month growth streak as job postings increased 2.18% during the month of October. Indeed job postings for October were 1.64 million compared to 1.61 million in September and are now at pre-pandemic levels.
The postings by weekday seem to suggest that the strength continues in November. Postings are cyclical by day and when examining growth during the month, it is helpful to look at it by the day of the week. The graph below shows the posting activity by weekday. The largest single posting day of the month occurred on Friday, October 16, but the second-highest was on October 30.
Gearing up for Holiday Shipping
Some industries continued strong growth.
- Transportation sector experienced a large hike in October. Amazon and other companies are flooding job postings with picking and packing jobs.
- Information sector which consists of web service companies also experienced strong posting growth.
- Food service during the month of October continued its rebound. However, given the recent rise of COVID-19 cases, the rebound is likely to be short-lived.
- Nursing and registered nurses continued to be in high demand.
Job Openings and Hiring Activity Not Sufficient to Replace Earlier Losses
While it is cause for encouragement that job postings continue to increase, there will have to be significant forward momentum to cover the layoffs from March and April. The backlog of displaced workers equals about 13 million so literally, new hires and openings would have to be significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels to eat into the backlog. The most recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from August indicate we still have a way to go.
- The pace of quits, layoffs and discharges are well below pre-pandemic levels indicating that employers are very reluctant to layoff any more workers. They may be willing and able to absorb further short-term pain until a vaccine is distributed.
- Less workers leaving the workforce cannot by itself cause a market rebound. Job openings must increase significantly to bring back displaced workers into the labor market.
About Insight for Work
Insight for Work is a jobs and labor market application for rapidly analyzing market trends without any database knowledge. Insight for Work integrates and optimizes data from job postings, hiring company profiles and ratings, compensation and benefit surveys, resumé profiles, skills and assessments, and government agency publications with the power of the Microsoft® Power BI business intelligence platform.
