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- 🎉 Hiring hangover...
🎉 Hiring hangover...
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Good Afternoon Party People! 🎉
The weekend is almost here!!
Did you know the weekend is a relatively modern concept?! The two-day weekend was first introduced in the early 20th century.
Before this, the workweek included Saturdays.
The Ford Motor Company was one of the first major companies to adopt the five-day workweek.
Today, we salute you, Henry Ford.
PARTY PLAN 🎉
🍺 A hiring hangover…
🤖 Using AI in your job search
🚸 Want work-life balance? “Don’t have kids” (booo)
And, of course, MEMES!
MEME OF THE DAY
When your coworker microwaves fish in the office…
HIRING
A Hiring Hangover…
January is typically a massive month for hiring. Companies are starting the new year, the holidays are in the rearview mirror, and they’re ready to make hires.
But not in 2024.
This year, job posts were down 5% since December 1st, and the number of people searching for jobs was up only slightly.
“Job searches fell 34% between Dec. 1 and Christmas Day, comparable to seasonal trends last observed in 2018-2019. And the typical post-holiday bump in searches was more muted this January than in recent years. But by the end of January, search volume had rebounded to levels 13% higher than those observed on Dec.1, in line with the bumps observed in 2018-2019 (searches were 11% higher at the end of January than the start of December) and 2020-2021, but much smaller than the larger rebounds witnessed in 2019-2020 (+60%), 2021-2022 (+32%), and 2022-2023 (+28%).”
An increase in searches and a decrease in postings is generally a good sign for employers as more job seekers are competing for fewer roles. Companies have the luxury of being more selective in their hiring process. The overall trend is a sign of a rapidly cooling labor market.
This supports the recent layoff trend, which has picked up to start the year. So far, 30,230 jobs have been cut in February, according to MacroEdge.
Below are the sectors with the largest increase in job postings (compared to December 2023):
Sports (4.1% increase)
Human Resources (2.9% increase)
Community and Social Service (1.3% increase)
Beauty and Wellness (0.4% increase)
IT Operations and Helpdesk (0.4% increase)
And here is a list of the top 25 fastest-growing jobs according to LinkedIn.
The job market has been strange ever since COVID. We’ll continue to update you all with the latest in layoffs and hiring trends throughout the year.
For more on the reduction in job postings, check out Indeed’s Hiring Lab.
JOB SEARCH
Using AI in Your Job Search
The past year has been brutal for job seekers. Layoffs, hiring freezes, return-to-office mandates, crazy CEOs…it seems never-ending. Not to mention all the job postings that have thousands and thousands of applicants.
But there’s hope.
Job seekers are leveraging AI to make the job hunt easier.
In fact, roughly half of all job seekers are using or plan to use AI career tools during the job search process, according to last week’s report from CompTIA.
90% of job seekers agree that digital skills are important and roughly one-third said understanding AI fundamentals is likely the most important digital skill nowadays.
About two-thirds of active job seekers said they understood the importance and potential impact of AI in the workplace.
Every age group was consistent in their agreement that AI has the potential to be helpful to a job search if it is leveraged correctly.
Specifically, job seekers said they already use or plan to use AI to review and optimize their resume, match skills to potential job opportunities, research companies, receive interactive career coaching, and automatically apply for jobs.
This is bad news for job seekers who don’t currently use AI to assist them in their job hunt. It’s extremely hard to compete with individuals or a pool of candidates with these tools at their disposal.
Luckily for job seekers, there’s about to be an all-inclusive tool that will transform the job search for people with access to it. Plus, it’s easy to use and inexpensive!
If you’re actively or passively looking for a job this year, be sure to get on the waitlist for early access to this tool.
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Want Work-Life Balance? Don’t Have Kids
Come on…
According to last week’s article in Bloomberg, a growing number of young adults are pessimistic about the idea of having kids and a career.
In 1992, a professor asked a class of graduating MBA students if they planned to have kids. 78% said yes. In 2012, he asked the same question and was shocked to learn that the percentage was nearly cut in half to 42%. Today, the U.S. birthrate has fallen another ~20% since 2012. 35% of women between ages 25-44 have never given birth, which is double the percentage of fifty years ago.
So wtf is going on?!
Well, today’s younger generations are deeply invested in having successful, high-paying, meaningful careers. Understandable.
But according to them, juggling the demands of parenthood would interfere too much. The dilemma isn’t anything new, but the solution now seems to be flipped. Avoid kids instead of work.
It’s hard to fault anyone for thinking a career and parenthood can’t exist because of the rise in childcare costs, inflexibility of jobs (although there are also a lot more remote options than in the past), and the challenge of finding a spouse to share the workload at home.
According to a survey of 20,000 people from Dan Pink’s book, The Power of Regret, less than 20 people (0.1%) regretted having kids.
Leadership may tell you that your company is your family…but no matter how much you love your job, it’s never going to love you back!!
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