Delighted to join brainfooder Paul Church on this Talent & Growth Podcast. We’re talking about the State of Talent Acquisition here - same topic as we had on Brainfood Live last Friday. Have a listen to my view on Paul’s podcast and on the panels view on Brainfood Live.
This guy is rapidly becoming my favourite economics commentator - something about his (naturally, I think) deadpan delivery and high frequency of content makes him super accessible. Anyways, Trump 2.0 is on my mind and we need any kind of insight we can grab in advance of Jan 2025.
What is the state of the recruitment market in France? Interesting research from our friends Achil, who produce this annual survey covering both state of the job market and state of the recruiters hiring for those jobs. Freelance recruiter percentage up? No surprise that it is. Download it as PDF and pipe it into Deepl for non-French speakers.
LinkedIn is becoming an increasingly popular space for academics, researchers and entrepreneurs to post their thoughts. Richard Baldwin, an economist focusing on globalisation / de-globalisation, is one of the best. His analysis of the impact Trump Tariff plans is essential reading, somehow making potentially dry economic theory an exhilarating read. What happens in Trump 2.0 will of course have pretty quick downstream impact on what we do in TA / HR, so we need to read this.
Economic ‘performance’ is often measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - variably described as the sum of the value of economic activity with a national state unit. However, the efficacy of GDP as a measure of economic health has come into strong critique. The democratic removal of incumbent governments in 2024 reveals a story of people being crushed by real economic conditions condescendingly described as a ‘vibecession’. Good explainer video on GDP - and why it is a very flawed metric of economic health.
Labour market economists have been concerned about the decline of GDP per capita for the past two decades, especially in certain countries where the decline seems long lasting and inexorable. This paper from 2023 is a statement of the condition and a call to action for further research that might explain the phenomena on why we seem to be less economically productive with each passing year?
Patrick Boyle again - with his annoyingly compelling dictation again. The episode doesn’t really doesn’t need a question mark though, as Europe enters the Trump 2.0 era in a geopolitical position much worse than Trump 1.0 with domestically weak national leaders, anaemic economic growth, an energy crisis w/o possibility of short term resolution, and looming tariff wars with the two biggest economies on the planet. It’s grim stuff, but we have to look reality squarely in the face before we’re able to get out of it.
With the Trump 2.0 era only a couple months away, good time to review the thinking on one of his signature policies - to replace income tax, with tariffs. Balaji Srinivasan is consistently right earlier than most, with his accessible take on it here. For those who want a deeper dive, the NBER paper Did Tariffs Make American Manufacturing Great Again? is worth a read. Or you can download it and convert it into a 10 minute podcast on NotebookLLM, surely Google’s best product release in a years. Meanwhile, everyone else has to prepare - BBC on the potential impact on UK
Love to see brainfooder George LaRoque’s research on WorkTech and compare it to this report from SIA. VC funding still anaemic, but better than it was in 2023 and seemingly some life in certain sectors of recruiting tech. Assessment / Verification tech will boost in 2025. Essential reading for everyone here I think.
Be great if every ATS provider produced pulse reports on TTH, Candidate per Opening and the like. Workable do this quarterly and it’s well worth a perusal to see if it give us any signals on the state of the market. Workable are one of many providers in a fragmented marketplace of ATS’s but with thousand’s of customers in the SMB and up segment, the data here is significant
The economy of the ROK has been one of the miracle stories of the modern era but it has not come without astonishing concentration of economic power into the hands of a few dynastically managed conglomerates. As of 2023, the top 10 ‘chaebols’ owned over 50% of the entire GDP of the country, with deep implications for politics, economy and society. Great documentary.
Hiring Lab from Indeed is becoming one of the most fascinating resources to follow on brainfood. This is post charts the requirements for native language proficiency across occupation types, industry sectors and different countries. ‘English not required’ was explicitly stated in 2.8% of job postings in the UK over the last 12 months. English language proficiency of the native population, immigration rate, demand for labour all relevant factors contributing to changing demands of language in work. Must read for the brainfood.
There can never be enough videos criticising the use of GDP as a measure of national well being. The diction of the narrator can be somewhat annoying here and some of the illustrations don’t quite land, but the general points are still well made. There are things which make the big numbers go up, but they may be bad things for society, We need new economic KPI’s
Everybody knows that the fastest way to the biggest increases in salary is to change jobs. Salary increases are modest though - and that even with 20-30% increase in cost of living these past 2 years. We’re in an employers market, lots of labour competition around, diluting the negotiating power of the candidate. H/T to brainfooder Lee K.Candiotti for the share in the online community
over three quarters (76 percent) of CEOs anticipating AI will not fundamentally reduce the number of jobs within their organizations over the next three years.
Always good to learn what CEO’s are thinking - 1300 surveyed by KPMG on topics covering economy, AI, Remote/RTO and the rest. Interesting to contrast these optimistic findings with PwC’s CEO survey, where the respondents predicted the opposite (5% decrease in headcount growth). Fundamentally different customer bases between two of the big 4?
My friend and brainfooder Simon Hammond is on the job search. I advised him to use the opportunity to tell data driven stories on the state of the UK market for data science types, and so he did. Check out Simon’s progress and what it can tell us about the job market here in the UK. PS: for fans of the Brainfood Larder, Simon is the guy who built that.
Stats from Silicon Valley Bank on the state of US VC investment. Not sure why we bother with cope charts like this - are these even inflation adjusted? Still good to see where peak recruiter was - right at post pandemic investment frenzy. Anyways, a very decent overview on the state of VC, and therefore tech. Download it here. H/T to brainfooder Chris Cruz for the share in the online community
Been getting into Indian YouTube recently - fascinating to learn from Indian commentators on the state of society, economy and politics. Halfway through this interview on one of the most under rated topics in any economic analysis - what is going on in the unofficial economy? Lots of GDP unmeasured here, India has a large portion of the labour force in this ‘grey’ economy. Fascinating watch / listen
One of the ironies of de-globalisation is that the increases to the cost of doing business by increasing trade friction fuels the global search for productivity will in turn leads to the geographical dispersal of jobs. Increasingly, this means employers will need to manage cross-border workforce - how are we set up for it?
More proprietary research, this time from Workday, which I believe remains the No1 ATS in terms of revenue worldwide. Job applications grew x 4 the rate of job advertisements, a strong indicator of distressed employment market. Also some interesting findings on how employers are using AI - I expect ‘conduct initial interviews’ to increase substantially as employers struggle to handle volume inbound.
Remote work was always a white collar privilege - and the white collar job market is not looking in great shape. Nice piece of research from programmatic advertiser Appcast, especially like the taxonomy of white vs blue vs grey workforce - the latter of which being in-person service work, which is incidentally may be the best insulated from disruption by AI / Automation.
Global economic growth is projected at 2.6%, but where is that growth coming from? The hard yards over the past two years is no cycle waiting for a rebound - it’s a new levelling to a slower growth, higher cost world. Massive report (at 220 pages) from the World Bank, so one of these to download and feed it into the machine to summarise. Download it here
In a month when Europe hit the headlines for fining US tech and raising tariffs of China manufacturing, Mario Draghi’s report on the Future of European Competitiveness could not be more opportune. Comprehensive and surprisingly accessible, this report attempts to explain why the tri-polar economic world 2004 has collapsed into the bi-polar one in 2024. Europe has a lot to do
Fascinating monologue charting economic history of the UK. Some of this is natural rebalancing of economy vs population density, but a great deal was also self inflicted, especially the squandering of the lucky boon of North Sea oil discovery. Not easy listening for the Brits but important to understand how we have got here, in order to make better decisions going forward.
VW’s shocking announcement of forthcoming factory closures - the first time ever in the history of the company - is a stark illustration of the challenges facing Germany, and the European economy as a whole. Outcompeted by China on manufacturing, and by the US on software services, Europe missed the opportunity of key technology innovations in the last decade - smartphone, social web, cloud, 5G, EV’s - despite often being in the lead and has been left ‘selling the past’ in the form of tourism and luxury goods. Europe needs to recover its mojo, statim.
This is a screenshot of the Reddit post which I though was a very decent history of the software business. As software production - and deployment - becomes ever more accessible to non-specialists, its inevitable that the value of software businesses will decline. SaaS is going the way web sites, implications for tech recruiters should be pretty clear.
There is no Schadenfreude here. Job market is tough not due to cyclical downturn but because we are at the beginning of a global transformation of work, where conflict between capital and labour will intensify. Brittany Pietsch, who became an unlikely avatar of that conflict when her TikTok live of her layoff from Cloudflare went viral earlier in the year, gives us an update on the job search.
Great resource from our friends ZipRecruiter - a beautifully designed dashboard which pulls latest official US government jobs figures into an engaging interactive website. Great for us to have access to this data, though as has been widely discussed online, official stats often diverge from reality.
Politics vs Economics - (some) politicians want global fragmentation, but they are swimming against the tide of consumer & industrial demand. Connector countries stand to gain, which got me thinking that they might be very decent places to play for entrepreneurs who want to de-risk from de-risking and make money doing it - anyone setting up recruitment companies in connector countries? Love to hear from you…
Old school website from ITJobsWatch so I can’t deny that nostalgia plays a role in my including it here 🤣. Useful tool for UK tech recruiters though, the search and filters provide decent controls and the year-on-year change gives you a decent view of the economic macro.
Nuclear energy is obviously going to be part of our new energy future, especially as new reactor technology which eliminates the risk of catastrophic meltdown becomes proven in production. It’s going to be growth sector for hiring, so how do you go about getting job in the sector? Industry recruiter Taylor Macdonald explains..
IMF produces quarterly updates on the state of the global economy - this one is the latest, encompassing July 2024 data. Low growth / no growth means TA needs to expand scope. For UK recruiters, ONS came out with the August data on the labour market - digestible stuff - and outlines the challenge ahead for the new Labour government when Parliament returns after summer recess.
PS: make sure you tune into Brainfood Live this Thursday - what the new govt is going to do is the topic of the conversation.
New YouTube channel for me but I like the depth of research Patrick Boyle puts into his monologues, and even though his ‘empathy-lite’ demeanour will be off putting to some, I found his analysis of the state of the big tech job market - and of the challenges of the graduate market in general - persuasive. Have a watch.
How confident are US employees on the state of the economy? Most interesting part of this research is the industry segmentation, with finance, tech and management consultant reporting the greatest confidence (we are not surprised, are we?). These scores are lagging indicators but you can check yourself as Glassdoor updates these monthly.
Intel - recipient of $20 Billion of US govt subsidies care of the CHIPS act - laid off 15,000 employees last week. Adam Tooze dives in to see why: a story of a company whose market dominance during the Wintel era caused it to miss not one (mobile) but two (AI) revolutions.
So the new Labour government in the UK wasted no time in doing Austerity 2.0 - though this time perhaps more reasonably given the anaemic growth overseen by 14 years of Conservative government. Still, where is the growth plan? Worth bearing in mind the power of the Bank of England Chair, Andrew Bailey whose comments seemingly constrain what the Chancellor of the Exchequer can do. We’re doing a Brainfood Live on the implications of the new govt policy on Recruitment and HR - up now, so register for it here.
With the last weeks news that Intel are going make 15,000 layoffs, US stock market crashing following the news, as well as grim reading on the latest JOLTS report, this ZipRecruiter job seeker sentiment data from a few months ago turns out to be prescient. Job seekers are the data and so we would do well to listen to them more, rather than rely on spreadsheet wonks constantly telling us to ‘look at the data’. Great interactive, especially on the segmentation on the demographics. Job market is bad and getting worse.
Great piece of work from our friends Talentful, pulling in research from the HIGHER community to better understand the State of TA in 2024. Lots to chew on here, including general hiring volume. Thanks to brainfooder Philip Blaydes for allowing this to be shared outside of the email reg wall - well worth a review
IMF comes out with these quarterly forecasts on economic growth - well worth keeping an eye on in order to contextualise business performance, as well as measure the accuracy of historical forecasts. Grim reading for everybody really, especially the Global North, where cost of living crisis is a cost of business crisis. Easy reading 8 pager
If you’ve noticed the dissonance between government reports on the state of the economy vs your own lived experience, then you’re not alone. The main factor is the cost of credit, and one of the crucial differentiators between the haves vs have-nots is when you bought your house…
This is fast becoming one of my favourite Youtube channels. Somehow the low-fi production value and the hosts monotonous delivery, makes it more compelling. UK has a large number of people ‘economically inactive’ - we’d better generate some hypotheses as to why.
I’m trying to figure out whether transition to renewable energy is going to be a jobs generator and the answer so far is….not directly, but maybe indirectly. Reducing the cost of energy should enable us to do more things, and it this increase in economic activity which might produce the demand for new types of work. One hour lecture and panel discussion on the state of energy in 2024 - well worth your time for future focused recruiters
Hostile de-globalisation is the undercurrent behind the cost-of-living crisis, and it’s continuation is one of the reasons why I am generally bearish about economic growth over the next decade. Richard Baldwin one of the few economists who offers nuance on the reality of de-coupling. He’s writes on LinkedIn (!) so do follow him there and this is a rare interview with him on screen presenting some of his key ideas - historical shifts in globalisation, re-globalisation and the trade of goods, factories and offices. It’s mind bending but compulsive viewing.
The irony of anti-immigrant Brexit is not only an increase in the absolute numbers of immigrants, but also a replacement of what types of immigrants are coming into the UK. One of many insights in this UK labour market overview from Hiring Lab - essential blog to follow. Have a read here
120 HR leaders surveyed on the state of 2024. We know most of the trends ourselves at this point - low growth economy + high inflation + hostile de-globalisation increases the cost of business, therefore cost reduction is the top line priority for C-level. The shift in priorities for people teams should be clear - it is away from talent acquisition and toward talent management, internal mobility and AI-enablement. H/T to brainfooder Emma Mirrington for making this available outside of the gate
Some new terms to learn: Business Dynamism - refers to the rate of new company formation / destruction, with the presumption that highly dynamic is generally good as it should mean lots of new jobs being both created and destroyed, which further means that workers re flowing across companies. Anyways, European business dynamism is in decline, almost all due to low growth / high cost of doing business.
This type of exercise reminds of the “How To Hire” series I ran on here a few years ago - a guide book for outsiders on what it takes to successfully hire in a certain country. If the theory that the search for productivity will accelerate job dispersal is correct, then we may well have need of it. This Start Guide for India is kind of what I am talking about - would a global library of country’s be a useful resource? H/T to brainfooder Mitasha Singh for the share
With the UK having dissolved Parliament last week in preparation for the General Election later in the summer, we have finally concluded one of the longest periods of single party rule in the country. How have the Conservatives done in the 14 years they have been in power? Tejvan Pettinger - who somehow combines being an elite cyclist with being a somewhat droll yet compelling Youtuber - provides the take down.
It’s an axiom of the bring back manufacturing brigade that protectionism will operate as jobs programme as much as it does for national security. Fascinating paper which provides counterintuitive evidence that it paradoxically has the opposite effect. Academic but accessible with implications for staffing agencies, especially if you plan on servicing an expected need which may not actually be there. Have a read
With President Joe Biden’s unilateral tariff impositions on Chinese imports this week, it’s clear that the free market rhetoric which has dominated economic thinking over the past 30 years has now been consigned to the ideological dustbin. Hostile de-globalisation is inherently inflationary, so if we you want to know why cost of living will continue to rise, this video from Wall Street Journal is a useful watch.
Apologies for the pop-ups on this website, but the content is worth it after you blast ‘no’ to everything coming at you 🤣. ComputerWorld tracks the US IT / Tech job market using a variety of data sources, including interviews with recruiters, who basically profess not to know very much. Paradox: tech layoffs continue but tech unemployment is not high. One thing that does seem to be happening though, is Tech Jobs Leaving California
REC report on jobs came out last week and the UK staffing industry remains fully in the weeds. Yes, we can point to minor bumps in wage growth etc but the fact remains that hiring is suppressed and at worse than pre-pandemic levels. Employers are waiting for the General Election and turnover of government, so when you’re ready Mr Sunak...
The Big Tech Winter is a story of the collapse of venture investment since the US Federal Reserve decided to raise interest rates in an effort to reduce ‘excess savings’ and motivate people to apply for jobs. Some signs that VC activity is picking up in 2023, but the interest has moved from SaaS to AI - 20% of US VC capital is now allocated to startups in this field. This means big tech winter continues, because AI startups don’t hire engineers with this investment, but buy compute with it.
The ongoing collapse in value of the Japanese Yen is one of the most important trends to observe in 2024. With debt to GDP ratio at 263%, Japan cannot defend the Yen by raising interest rates because the debt service costs would be too high, and so is caught in a trap as capital flight moves money out of low interest rate economies (Japan) to high interest rate economies (US). No one knows whats going to happen. Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot of things. Succinct, digestible summary for those who want to know more.
Digestible summary on the impact of immigration on employment rate on native worker populations: immigration rate correlates with lowered employment rate for native workers in the first year, before the effect is ameliorated by year two before disappearing entirely in year three. Impact also variable according to educational level of native workers - for University educated, there is zero impact, whilst lower educated native workers are most heavily impacted by imported labour. Good explainer for the who, how and why we all align differently on the issue of immigration
As part of the preparation for the ‘Talent Shortage in 2024’ talk I gave at HR Tech Europe last week in Amsterdam, I did a load of research on theories on the talent shortage afflicting the blue collar / front line services. I picked out the 10 which I thought were most pertinent to us in TA / HR, so have a read a read here if you want join the discussion on why no one can hire nurses, teachers, construction workers and the rest…
The video polemic against the perceived malign influence of private equity firms is both a great explainer of what a P/E firm actually is, what their role has been unlocking investment for privately held companies and why their non-public nature gives them cover to take excessive risks deleterious to wider economy. It’s a great video
Fascinating and disturbing look at the demographics behind the UK’s record number of ‘economically inactive’ people - they are clustered amongst the young (16-24) and the old (50-64), which together comprise 90% of the 2.8 million people UK Gov thinks should be in work, but aren’t. Mental health amongst the young and physical ill health amongst the old are the main reasons cited. With the change in government all but certain in 2024, the incoming Labour govt will have a lot of work to do.
A cynical explanation for unprecedented cranking up of interest rates over the past two years has been the perceived need to reduce the ‘Covid cushion’ - the savings that many of us had accumulated over the lockdown period when governments worldwide were effectively paying us not to go to work - and in so doing increase the motivation for us to apply for jobs. IMF World Economic Outlook for April 2024 gives us an overview as to where we’re at with this immiseration strategy.
Very nice update from Indeed on their Hiring Lab website - we now have a Hiring Lab Data Portal looking at job posting volume over time, filtered by country, region and sector. Essential resource for anyone interesting in the recruitment advertising as a measure of the economic activity. Bookmark it here
One area where the UK seems to leading the world is in the ‘economical inactive’ - people who are not on payroll (not the same as ‘not working’ incidentally) but not actively looking for work. Ill health is the No1 cause - 2.7 million people. What is going on? Peston with some typically fair analysis. NB: do check out last week’s post on the Millenials who are opting for the soft life.
Grim reading for the UK as the REC Jobs report for March reports a declining number of vacancies posted, a trend which has now been on course since early 2022. Vacancy index by sector was interesting in identifying which sectors had declined the most since 2023 - Exec/Prof, IT, Retail. Worth reading folks, especially if you are on the job market and looking - this is context for the tough sledding right now.
Are the tech unicorns making a comeback? Signs of life in the world of venture capital and tech startup as 2024 shows at least a dead cat’s bounce / maybe a mini-rally in growth and investment. Notable which category: AI
The dissonance in the US job market between ‘what the data says’ vs how people actually experience continues to be one of the stories of 2024. Revelio Labs does a great of presenting the former, but a much weaker one on explaining the latter. Scrutiny of the chart which describes flow between industries might give us a clue: the sectors with the lowest paying work are the ones doing the hiring, most seem to be part time, and increasingly performed by foreign born labour. Lots to think about, not least the need to cross reference produced information with direct interactions with job seekers and recruiters on the ground.
Mariana Mazzucato has been one of the leading new wave economists who are challenging old paradigms, arguing that the State has an underweighted contribution to innovation, especially when it comes to laying down the infrastructure necessary for transformatory innovation to take place. Great chat here with Prof Jeffrey Sachs, have a watch / listen.
Kudos to RecruiterFlow for aggregating publicly available financial data from global staffing giants Randstad, Kelly Services, Page Group, Manpower, Korn Ferry and Robert Half. It tells a story we all know, but great to see it validated at global scale. Must read for agencies and in-house TA as it contextualises our lived experience at the micro level with the global trends at macro level. H/T to brainfooder Sagrika Mehta for the share in the online community
Immigration is a highly politicised topic in countries with a democratic system of governance, with the rhetoric often being overtly hostile. The immigration series from Freakonomics is timely, nuanced and important. Especially good on the impact of assimilated vs immigrant names (there’s none!). Have a listen here. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share.
Thanks to brainfooder Doug Monro for sharing this months UK jobs data from his ad aggregator platform Adzuna. These actually come out every month, so UK recruiters should independently keep an eye on these. Not fabulous news as you already know, but good to know where we are at with hiring volume, time to fill, changes over time and so on.
There probably isn’t anyone reading this newsletter who isn’t interested in the Data Science labour market. This analysis draws on data from Kaggle 2022 survey of 20,000+ data scientists on their bio and their comp, and models out it to show who gets paid most and where. Important resource for you’re currently hiring for this skillset.
Larry Summers - an American economists and former US Head of the Treasury in the Clinton administration - caused a huge stir last week with this tweet thread which might prove the most cogent explanation for the dissonance between the ‘economy is doing great’ mantra of today’s US political and media elites vs the lived experience of many American citizens: there is a huge undercounting of the inflation rate, due to cost of credit being progressively removed from the calculus. Turns out, mortgages, car payments, credit card debt is a major part of the cost of living….
Chad and Cheese remain the preeminent podcast for ‘keeping up with the news’ in the industry. This was from a week or so ago but it’s action packed with news, updates, opinion which almost everyone else will miss. Reminds you not to miss an episode of this. Transcription helps too.
We should collectively pay brainfooder Jeffrey Dickey-Chasins for producing summaries like this. Platform performance is a good indicator as the state of economic activity, but we need someone to pull it together for us. Jeff does a great job here with this post….now how can we get him to do it more regularly? Subscribe to Jeff’s newsletter btw, essential reading.
As soon as you understand that best economists are paid £2million a year to shut the f7ck up and bet on you
Never heard of Gary Stevenson before but that one line got to me listen to this podcast, where he eviscerates the political, economics and media class for not only failing to address inequality in the UK, but actually exacerbating it. Not sure he has too many solutions, but we do need to have more firebrands like this in the public discourse
Another annual must read report is Appcast’s Recruitment Market Benchmarks. This is analysis from 379 million job ad clicks from 1300 US employers in 2023 and for my money, it is more reliable data source than anything you will find the public sector. Bottom line is: US Federal Reserve made a lot of people unemployed, in order to introduce ‘slack’ back in the labour market. The end result: reduced cost-per-hire for employers. Must read folks.
To cut a long story short, it’s a complete shit show right now.
This is what a career strategist / job search coach should be doing - detailed, data driven analysis of the state of the job market, backed up with real advice on how to handle the circumstances. The UX job market is buffeted by a number issues - not least the collapse of VC investment (hyper-scaling startups were most enthusiast evangelisers of UX) and perhaps the rise of GenAI, which poses some fundamental questions of the role of UX when dashboards get replaced by input boxes. Anyways, this is a great read - is there a recruiter / HR equivalent to this? If so, I want to know who you are.
Fascinating, high risk post from Aline Lerner of interview prep firm Interviewing.io. Meta seem to be the only FAANG continuing the hire engineers at scale and this temporary market dominance is manifesting in much tougher stance on compensation. Aline gives some pretty straight talking advice on how to get a better deal.
Lyn Alden has been one of the most intelligent commentators of economics, money supply, inflation and Bitcoin. Fiat money, end of Zero Interest Rate Policy, the export of inflation and instability from the Imperial core to the Imperial periphery, the disconnect between conventional financial reporting (we’re richer than ever before!) vs our lived experience and how maintenance of a failing system leads to conflict. One hour, good watch.
Mercer survey of 457 organisations, conducted in June / July 2023. Some of this already feels dated - which underlines the increasing inadequacy of surveying as a method of data collection - but there are still some really good bits of insight from the benchmarking charts here, like for example the configuration of In-house Recruitment teams based on employee size seen above. H/T to brainfooder Donna Svei for the share
Three theories have developed to help describe the dissonance between how the US cultural elites are describing the state of the economy (it’s f8cking great!) vs how people on the street are experiencing the economy (everything is so expensive!). Increasing wealth inequality - losses / gains realised over the past 2 years disproportionately fall on those who never had much / already had loads; media hype - people like me talking us into a ‘vibecession’ and finally, political polarisation and the geographic distribution of that polarisation. Great explainer video on the economic principles (mis)informing the debate.
It’s brainfooder Chris Russell again and I somehow didn’t know that he produces these 5 minute weekly summaries of the recruitment technology space. Best of its type - worth a listen and the subscribe.
Sobering reading from Indeed on the state of UK job posting in January - we’re having an anaemic start to the hiring year with not even the traditional January bounce in much evidence. Job search behaviour in the same period is up also, which gives a pretty clear picture on what team UK is right now.
Jürgen Klopp - unquestionably one of the world’s premier football club managers - announced his decision to leave Liverpool FC last Friday. The announcement video is typical Klopp - self aware, honest, vulnerable and principled. He will go down in history as an ATG but also I think a really interesting case study in leadership, culture building and succession planning. Well worth a watch, whether you follow football or not.
The slow down in wage growth seems to be a widespread phenomenon in the Western World, though growth in real terms now seems to be exceeding inflation. These are posted salaries though, not payroll, so we don’t know how much posted salary was inflated to entice applicants. Nevertheless, HiringLab is one of the must follow blogs around, get to it.
Some interesting job roles for sure, but also a few surprises, including ‘Recruiter’ coming in at number 9, which had me reaching for the methodology explainer. It looks like they are calculating growth rate from 2019 to 2023, so takes into account the ‘peak recruiter’ surge of 2021, as well as some of the fall from 2022 through to 2023. Is the recruiter community still net increase in size compared to pre-pandemic levels? That’s my read I’m getting from this, though raw numbers from LinkedIn could prove it. Let me know if anyone knows how we can get this, as you can count me as intrigued…
Any business with an audience can conduct primary research. Our friends at Firefish surveyed UK agency owners how they saw 2024 and ‘tempered optimism’ is the (expected) result, with no change in commission and small-to-no headcount growth. Nice to piece of work, especially on the regional segmentation. Download the report here
Chad and Cheese outrageous style is a perfect disguise for some of the most erudite analysis in the industry. Always good fun, this episode is a combo the review of their 2023 predictions year past (100% fail rate) and a go again for 2024. Here’s what’s great about these predictions - they are hyper specific and testable. Have a listen.
Really interesting thread on how a 2023 change in US Federal tax code might be inadvertently triggering increased lay offs in tech startups no longer able to write off hiring developers as R&D tax credit. Great work by Gergely Orosz, this was under discussed late 2023 but it appears to be factor in the continuing malaise in the VC backed tech sector. Have a read here. H/T to brainfooder Michael Blakely for the share
One of the difficult lessons we’ve learned over past few years is that none of us are insulated from the macro. Whether you prefer black swans to grey rhinos, high impact externalities reset the board for us in TA / HR, as in every other job category or industry sector. How did we power our societies in 2023? What can that tell us what is going to play out in 2024? The International Energy Agency has the investment review for the past 12 months
McKinsey do a great job of visualising some of the major trends that have occurred in society in 2023, including plenty which is directly relevant to us: CEO priorities, AI disintermediation of work, state of gender equity in the boardroom and racial equity in STEM. Lots to think about, and easily digestible via the charts.
Recruitment giant Manpower survey 40,000 employers on their first quarter hiring intentions in 2024. The update is not barnstorming but it is upbeat as 42% expect increasing in hiring vs 16% decrease and 39% no change compared to Q4 2023. Some very interesting regional / sectoral variations - all caveats apply on sample bias etc - but well worth taking a look at least on the sentiment of surveyed employers.
Another example of how small scale survey work can still yield valuable insights. OP is a UX coach who has an audience of designers, which he decided to survey on their current state of employment. Looks like design has been hit hard by Big Tech Winter. Complete with personal vignettes which offers important qualitative element to the numbers. Have a read
Nice bit research from tech interview training platform, Interviewing.io, combining data from TrueUp (whose founder, the brainfooder Amit Taylor is joining us for Forecasting 2024 in the first episode of Brainfood Live 2024) along with customer bookings for mock interviews to ascertain the state of the tech hiring market. Meta going to lead the tech hiring comeback in 2024 it seems, though worrying the No of tech recruiter roles does not seem to be increasing. Very interesting combination of data points from the US market - have a read
Maybe some other places are doing better. Brainfooder Jan Tegze certainly thinks so, as this outstanding piece of research on the volume of recruiter profiles on LinkedIn seems to show. Three reasons why this is a great piece: 1) demonstrates that one person can do research 2) shows the world is bigger than we usually think and 3) inspires recruiting brainfood to further globalise...
Another company with a great habit of sharing insight from proprietary data, is Indeed - or more precisely, the Hiring Lab team at Indeed. It’s not great news for the UK I am afraid, with jobs market slowing down as employers hold on FTE hiring until the country has some sort of stability in policy making, and maybe, some sort of vision beyond anti-immigrant tribal signalling. It’s great research on a mismanaged economy.
A real curate’s egg piece which manages to deliver great analysis (flawed definition of ‘unemployed’ as per US JOLTS data) at one moment followed by urban mythology (jobs advertised has an internal management technique) the next. It’s an exhilarating contentious watch and, I suspect, the inevitable future of how media is going to be look like going forward. Enjoy but think is the message.
Atomico’s State of European Tech is one of the annual must-read reports. Investment focused, the report tells the story of capital allocation in European technology, which sectors its going to, how this year compared to years previous and how it compares to other regions in the world. 50% of the brainfood audience is in tech startup, so if you felt that its been a tough 12 months, this will give you the explanation why.
Another AI aficionado and another interesting lecture, speculating on the nature of the economy in a world where a lot of human beings might not have any real competitive advantage vs AI. We are starting to rehabilitate the idea of UBI, because what else can we do? Shapiro also makes a strong argument against the overly simplistic utopian view that ‘technology produces more jobs’ - not directly, and not always. Another must watch.
Compelling, country and domain specific report by Swissdevjobs.ch. I didn’t think I’d be overly interested in learning about the software developer market in Switzerland but I was drawn in by this report, which asked great questions, provided great analysis and has super presentation. Reports don’t have to massive to be worthy or interesting - take a look here
Recruitonomics, the data analytics spin off from programmatic advertiser Appcast, have produced an excellent overview of the labour market supply / demand conditions in US, UK and Germany. The labour market remains ‘tight’ in US and Germany where vacancies outstrip available (or willing) labour to fill them. Hence interest rate hikes.
Record cumulative interest rate rises over the past 2 years were primarily designed to reduce ‘excess savings’ that people had accumulated during the Covid era, which had apparently reduced the motivation people had for work. Have a read of the IMF Global Outlook report, which includes this, along with other such goodies as 2024 national economic growth projections. Download here
Main themes of the annual report from Hired confirms what recruiters know on-the-ground: tech salary drop (in real terms), which only happens during recessionary periods. Also tension between remote vs RTO, expected misalignment along the threat of AI disintermediation and the continuing shift of job location to lower cost of living, in-country centres. US / UK data only but I think these themes are probably global. Must read, download here
Nathan Benaich’s State of AI has basically become the Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends for AI - an annual must read which gives a comprehensive overview covering investment, innovation, application and regulation landscape. It’s a monstrous 163 pdf slide deck (love to see Nathan deliver this 🤣) but given that AI a force multiplier for every field we care about, it is a mandatory read for everyone here. H/T to brainfooder Martyn Redstone for the share in the online community2. State of Tech Salaries 2023Main themes of the annual report from Hired confirms what recruiters know on-the-ground: tech salary drop (in real terms), which only happens during recessionary periods. Also tension between remote vs RTO, expected misalignment along the threat of AI disintermediation and the continuing shift of job location to lower cost of living, in-country centres. US / UK data only but I think these themes are probably global. Must read, download here
This is a great example of how any one of us can do super useful market research on available public data. In fact, as we’re meant to be expert finders-of-information we should be able to produce this type of market intelligence much more regularly than we do. Brainfooder Jan Bernhart in his analysis of the tech hiring trends in the Netherlands in 2023 - just in time for our State of Hiring in the Netherlands on Tuesday - make sure you sign up and show up.
A unicorn is business valued at $1 Billion market cap - what can learn if we grouped these companies together and sliced up the data into industry sector, countries, cities and the like? Super interesting post from Deelroom from which we can infer the general direction of investment / market interest into different types of org
Inflation, cost of living crisis, de-dollarisation - macro trends which impact all of us on planet earth, yet few of us have anything like the necessary education to even know how to think about it. Few commentators are as astute as Lyn Alden. She’s shilling her new book, but these series of podcasts can save you a few pennies if you prefer to watch and listen.
What does the the Tech Startup landscape look like in Europe? You’ll probably find out most of what you need to know in this superb report from DEEP Ecosystems. Includes stuff like how your city is trending in terms of founder attractiveness, the contribution of startup to job creation, the number of exits per city and lots of other great stuff besides. Download it here
With the far right AfD party continuing to gain ground in Germany, the rise of the populist right - which many may have thought had peaked in 2016 with Trump / Brexit - seems to be coming around again. The relationship between economics and politics is pretty straightforward really - inflation, cost of living crisis and hostile de-globalisation is going to lead to political manifestations which might be best described as ‘suboptimal’. Excellent interview with Wolfgang Munchau, gloomy but not without hope.
On a Bank Holiday weekend once again disrupted by industrial action, it is worth taking a look at two important precursors - the decade long decline in real terms of public sector sector pay and the importance of unionisation in getting fairer pay deals. As ever with neo-liberal socio-economic order, what is good for the consumer, is bad for the worker.
UK becoming the sick man of Europe is often blamed on Brexit or Covid but perhaps the groundwork for it was laid in the government response to the Great Financial Crisis, a decade long period of austerity which throttled economic growth, denuded state capacity and underinvested in critical infrastructure - energy, food, transport - which is all now coming home to roost. Excellent YouTube channel.
Subversion will come in short form video comedies. James Rehwald is a content creator on a mission, to tell the truth to power via visual comedy. The ‘AI will free us from drudgery’ is a argument we would all endorse, but we need to question why technology innovations never produce this outcome. Have a watch
Any podcast with brainfooder Neil Carberry is always worth listening to; here’s a fella who managed to communicate complex topics in a way which everyman can understand. Maybe is the Scottish vernacular. Great listen on the state of the market, especially pertinent for recruitment agency.
With inflation rates seemingly on the way down, we might today be inclined to say ‘yes’. But before we do, we might find it useful to understand exactly why interest rates were raised so aggressively in the first place, how that redistributes wealth around in society and what the end outcome of this inflationary cycle might actually look like. Few better commentators than Lyn Alden on this, whose writing is not only convincing, but also accessible. Long read, but you’re going to learn something.
Brainfooder Tony Wilson is one of the must follows for those of you who are still on Twitter; his research and analysis of the UK Labour market is comprehensive, accessible and unafraid to be accompanied with recommendation. This report on UK labour market statistics in July makes some convincing observations - wage growth has been driven by white collar private sector, whilst critical demand for candidates continues in the public sector where wage growth continues to lag.
…which might now include the idea that raising interest ratesdoes not necessarily dampen down inflation, as the Bank of England has belatedly discovered this week when prices surged again despite / because of another interest rate hike. A review of ideological orthodoxies is in order, and this overview from the New York Times on the era of globalisation and the fallacious assumption of the inherent superiority of the free market over state directed economics, is decent enough, though inevitability maintains ideological blindspots in other areas which urgently require equivalent examination. That too will come, in time, probably again when it is too late. Have a read though, and have a think
After growing 3.1 percent last year, the global economy is set to slow substantially in 2023, to 2.1 percent, amid continued monetary policy tightening to rein in high inflation, before a tepid recovery in 2024, to 2.4 percent.
Key observation from the World Bank as of June 2023 on what it thinks is going to happen in the global economy for the next 18 months. Massive 180 page PDF, it is surprisingly readable, and these days with ChatGPT on hand to condense and summarise, we could all do with getting a better understanding of the macro economic conditions - and of the impact of the policy decisions made by our friends in the US Federal Reserve Board. Want to know why the recruiter job market is tough? It’s all in here.
With the cost of living crisis hitting people where we feel it most - food / energy - at the same time as many corporations report record profit margins, Isabella Weber’s idea of ‘sellers inflation’ has its moment. It’s all about effective oligopolies folks. Worth 48 minutes of your time, and Weber is an economist to keep your eye on.
Another population segment we need to care about is the graduating class of 2023. What does the early entry talent marketplace look like? There is a theory that the advent of Generative AI will spur the increase of hiring for potential, as AI can help inexperienced workers most, but perhaps we have yet to see this percolate up to overall recruitment strategy. This is US data only but some fascinating nuggets to take away - overall job ad volume for entry level looks to have collapsed, public sector looks more promising than private in terms of vacancy volume and there seems to be an overrepresentation of STEM skill supply vs demand.
In what has become one of the annual classics, Atomico’s State of European Tech report provides context to the Big Tech Winter - capital investment in tech startup has dropped from post pandemic all time highs to what looks like a permanent reset at a much more conservative, much lower level. Summary of Angel / Seed funding from Gergely Orosz confirms the overall trend. Less funding, smaller companies, less need for recruiters - its not rocket science. Read Atomico’s report here, download the PDF here, Gergely’s post linked above.
Pandemic rewrote the economic geography worldwide; seasonal workers returned home and didn’t come back; metropolitan workers shifted to remote to relocated to cheaper and better places to live. The effects seems to have stabilised in 2023, with internal migration now being further suppressed by a mortgage market locked by high interest rates and dwindling housing supply. Have we now settled down? That is the question asked by this excellent post from EIG
The possibility of US default is obviously negligible, but the pantomime itself has impact on market confidence, as well continuing to erode the US public’s esteem of political institutions, so it’s worth understanding the whys and wherefores of this ritual, which Lyn Alden explains better than most. Also good piece at 45 min mark on GFC root of move to multi-polarity. All this stuff cascades down to us in recruiting at some point, so worth knowing the why as much as the what.
Cool thing about LinkedIn is that they have their own unique economically significant metrics to give us insight on what is going on at global scale. The ‘LinkedIn Hiring Rate’ is the frequency of new employer updates in individual profiles divided by number of profiles in that country. The news is confirmation of what we already know - hiring rate is decreasing across the globe.
Succinct explainer which is broadly correct: a) tech vacancy volume remains higher than pre-pandemic, b) most of those laid off from Big Tech companies weren’t actually engineers and c) those that were engineers still have justifiably low anxiety in a job market where their skills remain in high demand. Anyone want evidence of this, check out the attitude of my dev mates in Brainfood Live Ep199 - From the Developers POV
The concerns we hear about in the news media today are surface manifestations of deeper changes occurring in the world. The petrodollar era is coming to an end, and with it, exorbitant privilege, ushering in a world which will be different from that which went before. We need to know more about this, it will impact us personally and professionally, sooner than we think. Who better to learn from than self interested investors who are looking to hedge for the inevitable future? Sober explanation here
In a world of complex, intertwined systems, action in one area triggers a cascade which manifests in unexpected and unpredictable ways. The outrageous provocation in this essay somehow makes sense when you connect the threads between the shift to remote, massive increase of money supply during furlough, the ‘make the money work for you’ ethos of modern fractional reserve banking and sudden flip of risk profile of assets which were previously considered rock solid. It’s persuasive analysis
A consensus is beginning to emerge on the impact of the ‘Big Tech Winter’ - 200,000 workers have been laid off, yet most of these arenot engineers but from business support functions such as marketing, sales, HR and TA, along with a tranche of non-coding managers. The developers that have been let go have either found jobs quickly, are starting up on their own or - as viewers of last week's brainfood live can attest - generally taking it easy.
Some more rune reading for you on the state of the labour market and contradictions are persistent, which tells us either our data collection is problematic or something is going on in society with is at odds with the orthodox understanding of socio-economics. Still millions of unfilled jobs, yet still millions of missing workers, something which the US Federal Reserve has perceived as too high a cost of employment and so has been jacking up interest rates in record breaking manner. It’s a crude mechanism though and we are now see weakening investment and job growth as a result. Radancy, via the sterling work of brainfooder Sarah Ali, try to make sense of it, so have a go yourself here.
She’s a bit of a doomer, but there are few commentators more astute and accessible on the topic of money, economics and blockchain than Lyn Alden. Her twitter is a must follow and her interviews are always worth a watch and listen. If you’re interested in the state of the financial crisis in US banking right now, this 1 hour interview will do better than most.
I’ve been banging on about South Africa for the last few weeks, enthusiastic as I am about the people and the country. Offerzen are perhaps the most well known tech recruitment platform to come out South Africa, and here they are with a beautifully executed website what the tech labour market looks like in the country. Hiring for remote software engineers? You know where to look
With the news last week that Meta would further reduce headcount (including 70% of the recruiting team), the halycon days of tech companies hiring thousands of engineers seem to be definitively over. The post title is a rhetorical as the narrative of tech over hiring is quickly becoming the fashionable take. Data from Indeed is interesting, and the chart gives us a decent snapshot of where we are now and potentially where we might be heading.
1 hour worth of doomer prognosis on the SVB implosion. It’s worth paying attention to for multiple reasons - it does outline the potential risks of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the wider implications if the contagion is not stopped immediately. We should know the importance of stopping contagions as close to source as possible by now…
According to Pitchbook data, there maybe as many as 65,000 US tech startups which bank with the suddenly insolvent Silicon Valley Bank. By Monday, many of these may not be able to pay their staff with the miserly $250K of their deposit that is under guarantee. An extinction level event for a generation of startups according to Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan. This is not only a US problem, as SVB has a significant global footprint impacting tech startup ecosystems from UK to China - all in all, a disastrous second order effect of US Federal Reserve interest rate rise policy. Good thread and explainer here. For us in tech recruiting, it can only mean more tech layoffs, hiring freezes, unpaid bills and startup failures. Brainfooder Lars Schmidt with this excellent collection of resources to use for those affected.
Hired’s key innovation of tracking placements made by rewarding successful candidates with a cash bonus if they sent a copy of their offer back to the platform gave it an inadvertent advantage in compensation intelligence few platforms have ever matched. That they parlayed this intelligence into these fantastic annual reports is part of the reason why they have become an industry must read.
Far sighted speculation on who (or what?) is going to come out winning the Generative AI race, now that this class of technology has broken through to the mainstream. Quite a technical post, this is worth reading for recruiters who want to be better understand the infrastructure of the tech economy and why certain players are almost certain to win (again).
If you want to zoom out and satellite level view over what’s happening in the tech economy, then this piece from Elad Gil is probably as good a place to start then any other. The prognosis is tough - lots of company shutdowns and forced sales as ‘zombie startups’ run out of runway previously paved with free and easy VC money.
H/T to brainfooder Pablo I. Lundershausen for allowing me to share this Quarterly report. Drake Star is a global investment bank with a keen interest in the HR Tech sector, and this report comprehensively breaks down the state of the HR tech market, benched against the state of the employment market. It’s an investor deck but everyone will get something from this - market maps, trends analysis and financial health of publicly listed HR tech firms. PDF here, download it
200,000+ tech workers laid off and the prospect of more to come, speculation has been rife as to what is going to happen to this talent suddenly on the market. Does it mean greater dispersal of top grade talent across the industry? Perhaps it means a surge of new startups as experienced engineers don’t find comparable compensation to the roles they recently left; either way the prognosis is not bad…
Josh Bersin really seems to be stepping up his blogging game recently - that few posts have been exceptional and this one joins that list. The labour market is indeed churning and classical theories are losing their explanatory power, so why not introduce some anthropological analysis? Important critique of headline numbers which can mask the complexity of a world of work undergoing dynamic change.
Superb piece of research from CodinGame and CoderPad - 14,000 developer survey responses on what they think of the market in 2023. Key takeaway for me: developers are not concerned at great layoffs because they feel they will be able to secure alternative work quickly, a position for which there is strong evidence. Another angle of interest is the demographics - 47% of the respondents were from France, so this report gives a particularly relevant view for recruiters in the French market. And great to see more country specific content like this!
The bad news on tech keeps happening and its hard to escape the conclusion that this is at least a sector wide correction, and maybe even the beginning of a fundamental reset as how big tech companies should be. Stratechery adds another theory to the mix - Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which forces user to double opt-in on ad tracking - has destroyed the ad supported (and free) Internet, upon which an entire ecosystem of services rely. It’s a fascinating hypothesis - we may come to regret overzealousness in guarding privacy when it comes at the price of end of the free Internet and a permanent contraction of the tech market.
This looks like a nice project coming out of the Europe - a one stop salary comparison site, similar in purpose to the US centric Levels.fyi. As salary transparency goes mainstream, there will be winner-take-all dynamic in the compensation intelligence space, and you do wonder whether something community sourced like this might end up being the winner over the funded startup competitors. Needs more work, but useful tool as it is and worth keeping an eye on as it develops. H/T to brainfooder Denys Dinkevych 🇺🇦 for the share.
I think we’re deep enough into the year for this to be the last issue where I’ll be featuring prediction posts. Dr. Mohamed El-Erian in interview with Dan Senor on why the global economy might never be the same after 2023.
By democratically voting to leave the EU in 2016, the UK made the decision to cut itself off from a significant labour market of a theoretical 400 million workers. What the implications were to be for the economy were hotly contested at the time, especially for sectors heavily dependent on EU labour - healthcare, construction, hospitality, retail.
Now, 3 years after implementation, we are have a better picture - immigration is about the same as pre-Brexit, but with non-EU replacing EU as sources of external labour. We talked about Global Mobility on Brainfood Live last Friday, and this research is a fine complement to the soundtrack. Important read for all UK recruiters.
Bit of curates egg this post, but I like it because it weaves together the disparity in order to try and create a cohesive narrative, and is unafraid to include obviously relevant yet challenging topics such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Elon Musk as a market setter for tech layoffs and the motivation of employers to get people back to the office. Decent references too, worth a read for tech recruiters - and I would also say - decent nurture content for your tech candidates.
Davos 2023 concluded last week, and so the timing is perfect to take a look at what the great and the good think are going to be the challenges affecting the globe in 2023 . The visualisation above gives a pretty good at-a-glance view, whilst the report itself is digestible 25 pages. We are all impacted by the macro trends discussed within, so take a look, because sometime we need to zoom out to understand the why, as well as the what.
Central bank interest rate raises are designed to take the ‘steam’ out of the economy, in large part by reducing the cost of employment - a.k.a suppressing wage growth. Latest data from Indeed Hiring Labs (must follow for economic news) suggests that wage growth acceleration may well have indeed peaked, as the market tightens, people lose their jobs and become more desperate to work. Good timing for the RES Foundation to also come out with Living Standard Outlook, worth reading up on both of these to get some sort of balanced view on economic theory and practice + societal impact.
Big predictions from two of the biggest VC firms out there - Andreesen Horowitz and BlackRock, who each give their 2023 predictions, which I’m combining in this insert. VC’s are by no means infallible, but because they do cast a wide investment net - and, as they have plenty of skin in the game, their forecasts are worth paying close attention to. Check out both the links above for their high level yet comprehensive coverage on the macro trends we need to be aware of in 2023. Contextualise with the geopolitical substrate, for which the latest Economist piece The destructive new logic that threatens globalisation, provides grounding. It’s not all positive reading, but such is the world as it currently is. It’s essential stuff folks.
I’m not going to make a habit of this but we have a great conversation last week with Kate Shoesmith, Madeline Laurano & George Larocque, Andy Spence and Jo Avent on what we think is going to happen in recruitment in 2023 and I thought I’d best let you know about it. Give it a listen here, Adam Gordon as ever in the co-pilot seat
I covered the 1-10 in Open Kitchen last Monday, and I’ll do 11-20 in pt2 tomorrow. Of course no one can know the future but that shouldn’t stop us from making reasonable guesses based on observable trends. Specificity - the degree of change, and timing of it - is the measure of any forecast post, and so I’ve tried my best to quantify these predictions such that they can be confirmed or contradicted in a years time when they will have resolved or not. Hope you enjoy it - and let me know in comments which ones you agree or disagree with most 🤣
You know what makes predictions interesting? Specificity and the reasoning behind it. Great effort here by Forrester, who gather together tech leaders and ask them what they are going to be spending their money on in 2023, and how CIO’s and CTO’s compete for talent in a globalised marketplace.
India over takes China as most populous country, legalisation of party drugs as psychotherapy, Bank of Japan increases short term interest rates, Repair rather than Replace as fashion goes eco-friendly and Camilla wears the Koh-i-Noor in Charles coronation, accelerating the debate on the repatriation of colonial objects looted by Empire. It’s a great 20 minute video
An outline of the future economy can be traced in this predictions post by Andreesen Horowitz - healthcare, biotech, fintech, space engineering, new energy, robotics and the rest. Each of these sectors outlined will have sustained demand for talent and might be happy places for recruiters who are thinking about which sectors might have most demand for their skills. The post strikes exactly the right balance between comprehensiveness, accessibility and depth. Must read folks.
20 minutes to cover a crazy year, this podcast brings together both the Chief Economist of the World Bank, and the Dareen Akkad, an Egyptian baker and restaurant owner. De-globalisation, hostile or otherwise, is our new future.
McKinsey tells us the story of the US in this engaging interactive. Commodity price inflation, cost of living crisis, labour force reallocation, long covid and the impact of ill health on labour force participation and - a recurring theme across the WEIRD world, nurses not wanting to do the job anymore. PS: if you want to go down the rabbit hole, plenty more of McKinsey resources at the end of the post.
Wonderful report from Atomico, Slush and friends, the State of European Tech gives the definitive view of the sector a great many of us work in. Some headline figures - a total of $85 billion allocated by end of 2022, a huge figure, but a decline from $100+ billion in 2021, with the delta occurring dramatically at the second half of the year. Ripple effects on recruitment, growth projections, reshuffling of priorities all result from the shortage of expected investment. Download the report, bookmark the website, its a must read.
For 2023, I would like all ATS providers to produce monthly pulse reports on vacancy open / jobs closed data. Should be pretty easy report to run and would be invaluable to the community to get a consistent gauge as to what’s going on. Workable have been doing a fine job with it, as you can see with December report, with worldwide trends report on Time to Fill (TTF), Total Job Openings (TJO) and Candidates Per Hire (CPH).
Gergely Orosz has been mentioned several times before in this newsletter and this post is an example of why - he’s becoming the leading citizen journalist reporting on the human side of engineering, often with relevant stories on hiring. This one is such, where he interviews engineering managers on the current state of the tech hiring market. Essential reading.
Interesting post from Indeed, tracking the rate of change for wage growth in US and Europe. Wages are still growing but the rate of growth is slowing: Two interpretations: candidates are no long so hard to hire as before and / or employers are curbing their desire to hire, taking a defensive posture into 2023.
If competition for resources is the root cause of social and geopolitical tensions, then we could do well to learn more about it. Huge report coming out of the World Inequality Lab (pls note the funders) on the state of wealth and income inequality across the world. It’s a very good website and an accessible (if massive) PDF.
Great to chat with Paul and it was an honour to appear on his 100th episode of T&G. We’re talking Putin, energy crisis, IR35, remote to offshore, employer vs employee conflict and more. Tune in if you want to hear the chat.
Accessible multi-decadal trends analysis from the Institute of Fiscal Studies. This sort of research is important for us to better understand the macro economic foundations behind some of the clear challenges we have today. Increase demand from employees who want a better deal? Look at income stagnation from 1990’s onward. Charts are cool interactives too, full report downloadable here
Fascinating premise exploring the ‘non-trivial’ but significant effect of MBA training on wage stagnation, specifically that business leaders who have gone through MBA schools with its focus on profit optimisation, end up suppressing payroll inflation more so that CEO’s who didn’t. Plausible theory, argued and contested in this fascinating podcast.
There’s a couple of numbers I look for when trying the read the runes of rune readers of US labour market data - quit rates, as a sign of job seeker confidence and labour force participation rate, as a sign of whether Quantitative Tightening is having the intended impact of encouraging the economic inactive back to the workforce.Valuable monthly update again from brainfooder Sarah Ali - have a read.
No sweeter moment for David Heinemeier Hansson than right now. The inventor of Ruby on Rails, and co-founder of Basecamp and HEY, Hansson and his companies have long ploughed the lonely furrow as profits-before-growth businesses, often being accused of lacking ambition in the era of mega fundraises and hyper scaling. Now that the Big Tech Winter has truly set in, his words are again worth paying attention to - it’s going to be new/old paradigm for tech businesses for the next decade.
This is a cool tool - real time job posting stats from Indeed, who have the sort of global reach which makes its data hard to ignore. Could do with more country filters really but there are sector filters, so combining both can give you some very decent views as to the state of job posting in that area - useful for trends analysis. H/T to brainfooder Josh Willows for the share.
In short, because it is big enough so you can tell your investors you’re doing something but small enough not to require a wholesale rethink your org structure. Elad Gil thinks many companies should actually cut deeper, given the decades worth of organisational bloat fuelled by cheap money, most of which got parlayed into ‘over hiring’. Bit overly long post but worth persevering with - have a read here.
YovGov have got something of a strange website, the country filters send you off into clearly independently built web properties, so you can sometimes miss gems such as this - sentiment data on US job seekers over time. Fun tool to play with, didn’t have the time to check the data source, so bear that in mind before hot takes. H/T to brainfooder Sarah Ali for the share
De-globalisation can be understood as the politically popular repatriation of manufacturing, but it cannot ignore the iron law of the market which encouraged it leave in the first place - that the costs of production have to be low enough so that end products can be competitive to be sold. Re-shoring manufacturing may well mean re-shoring human rights violations in the effort to get there.
Confirms Gergely’s intuition earlier - tech hiring slowdown is the largest component of job posting declines - but may be generally isolated to tech. Lay offs are high profile but not indicative of general trend outside of tech. Lots of interesting insight on this, another great monthly blog to follow for economic news.
Every month our friends at Workable pulse out this report - trailing three month averages on three key recruitment metrics - Time to Fill, Total Job Postings and Candidates Per Hire. Obviously a single vendors perspective, but the trends over time are strong signals of what is going on in the market. Must read.
Gergely Orosz, is rapidly becoming the one of the must follow commentators on the world of tech. His focus is skewed toward big tech, but as he implies in this post, what happens to the big beasts will reverberate through the tech labour market. And what’s happening, is generally not good news.
Latest insights report from LinkedIn, well worth a review. Key points - economic slowdown as traced by job posting decline, drop on candidate confidence (especially see UK), persistent demand for remote work, whilst not compromising on compensation expectations. Pretty decent state-of-the-world - must read.
YovGov have got something of a strange website, the country filters send you off into clearly independently built web properties, so you can sometimes miss gems such as this - sentiment data on US job seekers over time. Fun tool to play with, didn’t have the time to check the data source, so bear that in mind before hot takes. H/T to brainfooder Sarah Ali for the share
De-globalisation can be understood as the politically popular repatriation of manufacturing, but it cannot ignore the iron law of the market which encouraged it leave in the first place - that the costs of production have to be low enough so that end products can be competitive to be sold. Re-shoring manufacturing may well mean re-shoring human rights violations in the effort to get there.
Confirms Gergely’s intuition earlier - tech hiring slowdown is the largest component of job posting declines - but may be generally isolated to tech. Lay offs are high profile but not indicative of general trend outside of tech. Lots of interesting insight on this, another great monthly blog to follow for economic news.
Every month our friends at Workable pulse out this report - trailing three month averages on three key recruitment metrics - Time to Fill, Total Job Postings and Candidates Per Hire. Obviously a single vendors perspective, but the trends over time are strong signals of what is going on in the market. Must read.
Gergely Orosz, is rapidly becoming the one of the must follow commentators on the world of tech. His focus is skewed toward big tech, but as he implies in this post, what happens to the big beasts will reverberate through the tech labour market. And what’s happening, is generally not good news.
Latest insights report from LinkedIn, well worth a review. Key points - economic slowdown as traced by job posting decline, drop on candidate confidence (especially see UK), persistent demand for remote work, whilst not compromising on compensation expectations. Pretty decent state-of-the-world - must read.
Another month, another labour market update from brainfooder Dr Sarah Ali. Too many main messages to summarise here, but the persistent theme is low labour market participation and myriad reasons why. Have a read. PS: I really need to summarise the reasons for the candidate shortage in the Substack - will get on it, even if it needs a few all nighters!
US funding data from Angelist confirms what we already know - early stage deal flow has collapsed, as confidence evaporates in the face of record, inflation, central bank counter measures and a general atmosphere of hostile de-globalisation. Interestingly, frontier tech is going well, long bets being made on the businesses that are going to rebuild the world after this. Have a read here, download the report here
High profile tech layoffs has been one of the stories of the summer in our business, but what kind of people generally get laid off in these announcements? The top result might be alarming reading - it’s use, the recruiters! Nice piece of research from Interviewing.io, crunching through the data from layoffs.fyi and cross referencing back on LinkedIn
Daniel Zhao is one of a number of labour market economists who are doing an amazing job of disseminating their research to the wider public. His twitter is well worth a follow, especially when he covers the monthly JOLTS update. Strangely authoritative despite lo-fi data collection methods (calling people up by phone who does that), JOLTS basically operates as a barometer to the state of the US labour market. Easy digest here.
Talking about tech job marketplace, one of the best barometers might be how active the monthly whoishiring comment thread is on HN. This operates like a grassroots job board for its 3 million or so members, most of whom are in tech. Google sheet is here, see for yourself the trend line.
One of the very few reports you can trust on salary data is from Hired, whose singular innovation of paying for a copy of the hired candidates contract, means that they’ve always been able to collect information no one else can. Needless to say, this one on tech salaries is a must read.
“It is not enough to simply tear things down though – we also need to build.“
REC has been a superb commentator on the state of the UK economy, using its lens as representative of staffing agencies to better understand the implications of government policy. Must watch for UK brainfooders.
Hot on the heels of a wonderful Brainfood Live on Where Are The Missing Workers?, this post describes the challenges of the service sector economy in attracting workers. Labour force reallocation may be overblown, but for some industries it is undoubtedly true. Get ready for robot service / self service if you want to eat out.
In our rush to see the end of pandemic (and pandemic mitigation measures…), we might well have underestimated the aggregate impact of disability from bad cases of Covid-19. Candidate shortage we’re seeing can at least partly be explained by the millions of workers currently economically inactive due to long Covid. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share
Brainfooder Sarah Ali has been producing these monthly pulse reports and I’ve included every single one since I became aware of them. Superb analysis of labour economics in the US, made accessible through great writing and strong visual components. Must read for US brainfooders - and, given the dominance of the US economy - non-US brainfooders also.
So last week, one of the most popular posts made the very good point that you should not base your market analysis on high profile tech lay offs alone. It’s still worth keeping an eye on though, and True Up probably do as good a job as any on keeping us up to date. H/T to brainfooder Jo McCatty for the share
Bersin is going to be the headliner in HR Tech in Vegas and his talks are always superbly delivered. If you can’t make it, this monologue is a decent summary of the scene and what Josh is going to cover.
Long term illness and disability might be one of the most significant consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic - latest study from Brookings suggests a figure as high as 4 million US citizens perhaps permanently leaving the workforce due to inability to work. Goes some way to explain the candidate shortage we touched up earlier, especially in key worker industries.
High profile tech layoffs capture the headlines but are less significant to the overall employment market than the less dramatic hiring freeze. Author crunches some simple arithmetic to tell us that it’s not lay offs we should be worried about but vacancy volume. Outstanding read.
Remember the Labour Market Paradox in 2021? It’s back in its 2.0 version as talk of economic recession, high inflation and business closures collides with persistent talent shortage and record number of vacancies. US data here from LinkedIn (based on no. of people updating employment segment of their profiles) shows the K-shaped market. UK data from REC, a similar story. We’ll be talking about this in Brainfood Live later this month, Where are the Missing Workers - make sure to sign up!
Love this podcast from Neil Carberry and Greg Savage - two fellows who have some unique access to the boardrooms of staffing agencies. Have a listen to what they have to say about the state of the market. Have a listen
The Great Resignation was replaced quickly the Great Reallocation….but did it really happen? I’ve read two reports in the past week which says rather counter intuitively now, that it didn’t. This one, from the ECB is aligned to this view, though I think more granular sector specific analysis would reveal a more significant shift.
Reading the market under the conditions of chaotic change has become a fools errand. Josh Bersin has a go here, and his underplaying of the macro economic factors is less convincing than his observation that ‘every industry is transforming into something else’. That part couldn’t be more true. His highlight of PwC’s 4 R’s matrix is a useful orientating model for recruiting & HR.
Since the 1970’s, we’ve kind of behaved as if it can, aggressively promoting globalisation and integration, and - in the first world at least - reaping the benefits of ever high standards of living. Whether this idea is sustainable or not might determine whether you support Elon on his mission to colonise Mars….easy 6 minute animated video.
Nice twitter thread from brainfooder Tony Wilson on the recently released Labour Force Survey. Long term ill health showing up as a factor in economic inactivity, a massively under rated effect of pandemic mismanagement. Tony will also be joining us for the Brainfood Live on the 30th - it’s going to be panel of expert labour market economists - make sure to sign up.
I have been banging on to recruitment vendors to pulse out more reports, more regularly, and great to see some of the responses. Thanks to brainfooder Sarah Ali, Global Economists at our buddies at Radancy for producing these monthlies. US data is what we now expect - a confusing mix of messages, which simultaneously tell us about slow growth, high inflation, concurrent with continual challenges to hire. Have a read here. Incidentally, Sarah will be joining us on Brainfood Live next month, when we talk about ‘Where Are All The Missing Workers?’ - make sure to register.
Thousands of UK students got their A-Level and GCSE results last week, so this is a well timed update from Indeed Hiring Lab on what the graduate career market look like. Some good news - graduate job market has bounced back, though internships still suffering as employers can’t quite figure out how to deal with remote…. Accessible, quality research
And yet lay offs are a thing, especially in tech and especially in scale up tech, where VC money raised on the model of a troubled yet fundamentally globalising marketplace has been shattered by war and ‘hostile de-globalisation’. Visual Capitalist with a great if incomplete visualisation of what’s up
Excellent report from our buddies at Landing Jobs, who surveyed the global software engineering community on the stuff they do and stuff they want to do. Unusual geographical diversity in these results, something which will become increasingly important as more software engineering roles migrate to remote. Have a read here
So I lied when I said it was the last one on labour market economics 🤣. This is is great though, as it provides evidence on what we intuitively know is true anyway - that going to another employer is the best way to increase your compensation over the long term. Interesting to know what impact salary transparency might have on this effect, should suppress it somewhat I think?
Last one of labour market data! This one from LinkUp indexes public job listings and charts them per company against when hiring freeze or layoffs were announced. Big tech aren’t high volume hires in the context of the overall economy but they do have market moving impacts whenever their hire or don’t. Accessible post, worth a look.
Another labour market report, this time with US data. Brainfooder Sarah Ali, Senior Economist at Radancy, has promised me a monthly cadence on these, so I hope you find them useful! Particularly interesting of the ‘quit rate by industry’ - an important metric which helps explain the incongruity between talent shortage in one place, and mass lay offs in other. Good report - check it out here
I think brainfooder Bas van de Haterd said it best - great data but wow this design 🤣. It’s a bit of an eyesore but the data is undeniably interesting - on UK vacancy and application rates. More companies that have this type of data should pulse it out…
Interesting analysis on the selective application of hiring freezes at Facebook and Google. A good example also of the valuable contribution recruitment technology vendors can have in our space outside of core service. HN with long valuable conversation thread also
The case of the downturn being felt principally in tech is strengthened by this research from Indeed, where we see a significant slow down of tech job postings, whilst other sectors remain robust. Big tech companies are important bell weathers, but we are over probably indexing on them. Great research, must read.
Another year, another economic conundrum - as the US tumbles into technical recession, job vacancy rate remains at a high, and competition of workers is still acute. What exactly is going on? Increasingly, it may be an unofficial, decentralised, acephalous general strike. Organisations will have to get innovative with much greater flexibility in hiring and employment or automate. Have a read. H/T brainfooder Randy Bailey for the share in the fb group
In software development - and in many contexts in recruitment & HR - it has become consensus that monolithic thinking does not produce fast or even adequate solutions. So why do we think of the economy that way? Exciting new research of applying network and systems theory to national economies. Accessible read, it’s barely recruitment, but it’s definitely brainfood…
Caveat being that what is actually crashing is ‘TC’ or ‘total compensation’ in startup speak. The fact that annual equity grants can form a significant portion of an employees total compensation will seem alien for many outside of tech startup, so this insiders view is a fascinating introduction to the topic, and how variable compensation of this type can be dependent on external factors unrelated to job performance. Loads of jargon here but get past that and you get a glimpse of the candidate / employee psychology.
I urge more vendors to produce pulse reports of this type. Workable’s monthly updates have become a must read for industry watchers keen to get ahead of the market by looking at market wide KPI’s. Job openings down, but so too is Time to Fill.
One of the reasons why I love the compensation tech category is the production of quality reports like this - verified data collected from 127,000 employees across thousands of companies. Some interesting trends to observe, especially with the prevalence of geo-adjusted pay and the rate of headcount growth per valuation. Essential reading for anyone in tech startup.
William Tincup is one of the smartest people in the business, and also one with the most melodious voices for radio. Here he is talking anthropology of recruitment, what Karl Marx has to say about society and where we all go from here. Cool interview with Chris Taylor, have a listen here.
Essential report from Indeed on the return of international talent mobility, following nearly two years of pandemic induced lockdown. Candidate shortage will not only be alleviated by moving the jobs to remote workers, but also by moving those workers to the job - even if they are ‘remote’ (relo-to-remote). Must read
Visual history of 47 recessions in American history, from stock market crashes, transitions from war to peace, Federal Reserve policy changes and so on. Long but readable post, useful for anyone who wants to place our moment today into historical context.
Great Resignation, Great Reallocation, perhaps we can now add ‘Great Revaluation’, as the era of the instant Unicorn comes to a close. VC’s are not the only barometer of economic health but they are an important signal and forcing factor. Second half of 2022 is going to look very different from the first half, and maybe yet another new normal in this unprecedented era of change (last cliché I promise 🤣)
Klarna, ClickUp, Lacework, Meta, Salesforce, Coinbase, Tesla, Netflix…the list of tech companies lay offing staff or announcing hiring freezes continues or offer withdrawals continues to accelerate, so much so that what was relevant last week seems dated the next. This post from Protocol just about manages to stay current, though perhaps the best way to keep abreast of tech layoffs is just to keep an eye on the website dedicated to the task. H/T to brainfooder Sajithkumar Swaminathan for the share in the fb group.
The growth or de-growth for tech scaleups? This tracker from Trueup gives a snapshot. Remember, joining the community and the job board are two of the must do things to do right now, no matter how confident you feel about your immediate prospects
Use the time to improve process folks, says said veteran Richard Cho, Chief Recruiting Officer at our buddies Gem. We need words of wisdom like this, remember the lessons learned during Lockdown 1 and apply them. H/T to brainfooder Suvasanamayee Viswanatha for the share.
Compensation tech is an emerging category in HR, and I’m all for it especially as it should mean greater access to comp data on aggregate. This short post from Pave shows an increase in monthly churn, as the Great Resignation continues. Though I wonder whether this is now more to do with the Great Reset…
These pulse reports are invaluable - can we get all ATS’s to start doing them? Workable have been pumping these out on the regular - H/T to brainfooder Keith Mackenzie - and this consistency allows us to see trends on hiring volume based on vacancies created on-platform. It is what you expect.
Well the post pandemic recovery didn’t last long did it? Grim reading from the IMF, whose World Economic Outlook report outlines the dampening effect of war, economic sanctions, climate change, and ongoing pandemic, which of course is still going on even though we are doing our best to ignore it. It’s a 200 page monster, so hard to digest but one which I suspect we have to download and review. Quick shout out to folks like Lyn Alden, whose investment blog balances technical expertise with lay persons accessibility. Keep an eye on all this stuff, because as recruiters we have to know where the wind is going to be blowing. And many thanks to Mary Kokolina for sharing this, on the LinkedIn post on the topic.
As the world becomes more data centric, skills demand is moving from English to Maths. Pretty clear from these projections that the growth jobs of the next decade are going to be data centric. Food for thought for recruiters looking for their next vertical or indeed wanting to up-skill themselves to be future ready. Despite this being a US government website, it is easy reading.
Brainfooder Jesse Tinsley with a fun game on Twitter, which quickly become a viral thread. Feel free to keep asking Jesse to give you your market rate. Like I said, fun ….and maybe useful.
The War in Ukraine - and the consequent excising of the Russia from large parts of the global economy - will have cascade effects throughout industry, especially those dependent on stable energy costs. We have little idea on what these impacts might be, but OP speculates on a few. Not for the faint hearted, but then, I suspect the emergent world won’t be either.
4000+ recruitment agents worldwide completed this report on recruiting trends conducted by our buddies at Bulhorn. Some interesting data from the 3rd party supplier side of our industry. Take a look folks here. H/T to brainfooder Maiken Baromich for the share.
The flood of VC money into European tech startup is leading to an unsustainable competition of engineering talent. The urgency of this report is somewhat at odds with the data provided by Talent.io earlier in this newsletter, so worth absorbing all the data points and before marrying to your own experience. H/T brainfooder Colin McNicol (again!) for the share in the fb group.
Vendors often ask me, Hung what kind of content gets into the brainfood? The answer is stuff like this, proprietary data drawn from user behaviour, which no other author can produce. Talent.io are a tech marketplace that operate in major tech hubs in Europe - here is their report on median salaries for European devs. Must read for European tech recruiters. H/T to brainfooder Denys Dinkevych - who I believe is still in Kyiv - for the share. I hope you are safe my friend.
It’s Super Bowl Sunday so what else should we do other than listen to Freakonomics podcast on the economics of the Long Snapper? There is not much sense to it actually, as it’s no doubt a critical yet disrespected role. Fun listen, and brainfood in the sense that value and visibility aren’t always the same thing.
Great post from brainfooder Jason Liu, who dives into levels.fyi to pull compensation data for recruiters. Some eye popping figures here, though the sample is likely from the highest, generally tech, payers in the US. Still, with the advert of shift to remote and ‘hire-from-anywhere’ mentality, opportunities for recruiters to up their compensation is right here, right now. H/T to brainfooder Sue Viswanatha for the share.
Of course ‘Customs Officer’ is the No1 for the UK - Brexit Britain adding value by adding to the red tape economy 👍
Anyways, this research on fastest growing jobs in 2022 from LinkedIn is pretty interesting, especially as you can generate country reports for the Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the US. Take a look.
Some cool data visualisation from our buddies at Revelio Labs, charting the a) salary increase for recruiters, b) headcount for recruiter roles and c) shifting skills in-demand for recruiters. It’s brainfood.
This is really cool - it’s brainfooder George LaRocque taking us through Worktech investment in 2021 and what to expect for 2022. Pretty sure there isn’t anyone more on-the-ball in this space that this guy. Have a watch / listen.
You don’t have to agree with everything Tyler Cowen says but you have got to recognise him as one of the foremost public intellectuals working today. Fascinating conversation with Spencer Greenberg on the how to think, basically. Must listen.
Been hearing a great deal about Ray Dalio’s new book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail, so I thought I would tune into an interview with him to get the gist, and it turned into a fascinating discussion on macro trends, the relationship between internal & external tension - and the contradictions of having a sovereign currency as simultaneously the global reserve.
The LinkedIn Hiring Rate (LHR) is the percentage of LinkedIn members who added a new employer to their profile in the same month the new job began, divided by the total number of LinkedIn members in that country
Is this the most accurate signal we have on whether hiring is actually happening or not? It’s much better than job ad volume. Or anything else I can think of. The December insights report from LinkedIn’s Workforce Insights newsletter is interesting (hiring cooling btw, likely due to Christmas + Omicron), but I include it in here mainly to raise awareness of the LHR measurement - seems like a metric we should all be more familiar with.
It is Goldman Sachs talking Global Economics for 2022. How big a problem is aggregate inflation going to be? Will wages be able to keep up? Can Recruiting Brainfood continue to maintain its insane price freeze for sponsors? All questions to be answered; GS do a decent job of covering the high level in a reasonably accessible way. Listen to it here
Concise and clear market overview on compensation and benefits data in the UK. Relevant to all UK brainfooders I should imagine. Only 25 minutes, have a listen / watch here
Hard to avoid cliche when doing short term prediction posts, but this one from Glassdoor manages to include some unobvious themes to look out for 2022. Particularly resonant for me? ‘Workforce population expanding beyond the company boundary’. We ‘recruiters’ need to expand scope and change our name…
I’m in this and falsely set up with a 🌽⭐️ meme, so thanks Joel. Anyways, we talk about European tech and generally all the exciting things that are happening in our space, on this side of the Atlantic. Had fun. Have a listen.
Nice bit of research from our friends at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, with year-on-year data on job postings, regional (sadly no surprise to see North East again in last place) and even sectoral segmentation. For UK subscribers, must read.
Gergely Orosz is staking a decent claim to be the guru in tech hiring, with regular, insightful posts like this. Whilst the research is pretty much him speaking with engineering managers, the collation here chimes with reality - 2021 has been a year of ad hoc yet significant comp adjustments for the highly skilled in demand. Have a read here. H/T brainfooder Matthew Hill for the share
Fascinating graphic purloined from US Census Bureau data on the size of the US working population. Trump+Covid has killed the era of easy immigration. What that means for economies who built their strength on it is uncertain.
With US CPI at 6.2%, any wage increase in the past 12 months less than this is a low ball. No surprise that your best bet might be to quit and find uplift in salary as a new hire somewhere else. Local data but a cool sample of what we all know to be true - you get bigger jumps in salary, if you quit.
You can adjust these charts by country (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and United States) as well as by sector. HR comes into the top 5 sectors to experience significant increase of job postings - no surprise. Take a look here
Shame on me for not knowing that our friends at Radancy produce these cool monthly summaries. Accessible, up-to-date content on things you should know - have a read here.
Excellent presentation from Acadian ventures, which synthesises of a number of key work trends that we’ve all borne witness to - shift to remote, candidate shortage, K-shaped recovery. If you needed one, accessible document to summarise where we are at in the world of work, this would not be a bad option. The summary article here, and you can download the pdf here. H/T to brainfooder Bill Boorman for the share in the fb group
This post is exactly what the title claims it to be - it’s a comprehensive and accessible report on the games industry - pretty much a must read for any recruiter in the game. H/T to brainfooder Alla Pavlova for the share
State-by-state analysis on which ones have the highest salaries for tech jobs. It will be fascinating to see how jobs migrate as distributed working becomes the norm for technology first companies. Will we see more companies adopt Google’s heavily lambasted location adjusted compensation schemes? Of course we will. H/T brainfooder Simon McSorley for the share in the fb group
Loving the output from brainfooder Jan Tegze lately, answering industry wide questions via diligent use of common tools. How many recruiters are there in the world (at least the world on LinkedIn)…..about 1 million, it seems. Have a read of the work, here
LinkedIn confirms what we all knew already - the market for recruiters is white hot. We also seem to be cannibalising the industry, mainly hiring those who have previous experience of recruitment, circulating talent around rather than growing the large overall pool. What are we going to do about it? - that is the question. H/T brainfooder Manjuri Sinha for sharing
Nice data visualisation of the top 100 companies by market cap. By country, US has by far the largest number, followed a distant second by China, then even further back, by everyone else. Division by industry within country is more interesting though - how big of a technology slice do you have? Original research from PwC, downloadable here
Hiring optimism tempered by concerns over worker shortages is the bottom line, according to this report from ManPower Group, who surveyed 40,000+ employers worldwide. Read alongside the WEF post in labour market paradox above.
Paradox is: employers say they can’t hire, yet millions of people have lost their jobs and should be available. What gives? Accessible summary by the WEF, whose selected luminaries base their theories on International Labour Organization (ILO) analysis. H/T brainfooder Colin Donnery for the share in the fb group
More Jabs = More Jobs? Kind of. Any kind of measure which suppresses the pandemic - including high vaccination rates - accelerates economic recovery. Accessible country-by-country breakdown on the OECD projections. Taking a macro economic view is increasingly important for us in TA, especially as our employers we zoom out from local labour landscapes in the era of remote.
Some data to back up what we know to be true - urban agglomeration is in reverse, especially the tech hubs we were calling ‘superstar cities’ only 18 months ago. Best location to now build a company? ‘In the cloud’ say the majority of tech CEO’s.
Launch report from the Resolution Foundation and London School of Economics forecasting UK’s next decade. 5 big challenges folks.
Covid-19 aftermath
Brexit
Net Zero Transition
Automation
Ageing population
Can’t be overly pessimistic with any of this but important to know the lay of the land. Outstanding, digestible report, so UK brainfooders - download it here
Everyone loved brainfooder Anh Tran‘s stats summary post from a few weeks ago, so he has gone and done another one. There’s something here for everybody, so have a read.
More than 2,000 global recruitment firms share their insights on the top trends (and challenges) facing the industry this year.
Are recruitment agencies still ‘canaries in the coal mine’ for the economy? If so this interactive website from Bulhorn should be a valuable resource. Check it out here
Brainfooder Ross Clennett does a great job of keeping us up-to-date with what’s going on Down Under. Reports of a hiring boom was not false optimism, it seems really to be here. Check out Ross’s well referenced commentary here
Comprehensive report on the impact of Covid-19 to the UK job market. Accessible and well presented, this report is particularly good on industry segmentation. H/T brainfooder Dave Jenkins for making this available outside of registration wall - download it here
Few organisations are going to have the ability to produce market intelligence like this. LinkedIn have made a useful resource here - explore the job trends and skills emerging as we begin to recover from the pandemic, filtered by country reports. One to bookmark or find again in the larder
The Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) is an attempt to rank the competitiveness of companies, cities and countries in how they are taking advantage of the changes AI are bringing to the world of work. Seems way too ambitious really but methodology is explained here, report can be downloaded here and the interactive is fun to play with, here. H/T brainfooder Ivan Harrison for the share
The annual survey about the latest trends in the JavaScript ecosystem.
As you can expect, it’s a beautifully implemented website, full of rich data on what technologies JavaScript engineers are using. Must read for tech recruiters and anyone who loves a great web experience - have at it, here
Nice piece of research from brainfooder Andrew Stetsenko and our buddies at Relocate.me. Germany ranks No1 - likely to a range of factors including job density, country brand and track record of integrating immigrant communities. Useful for European tech recruiters.
Definitive list of human resource & job search statistics for 2021: resumes, job interviews, hiring & recruiting in numbers. Great for HR experts and job seekers.
👆 And so it is, for anyone who is writing a post, delivering a presentation or building a business case. Doesn’t go into any QA on the data, but that is probably a good thing for a post of this type. H/T brainfooder Ivan Harrison for the share
The call to action from the World Economic Forum to build back better by going in a different direction from mindless profit maximisation of neo-liberal capitalism, baking in social good, green economics and stakeholder capitalism. Tons of resources in this website, which no doubt will continue to be added to. One to bookmark I’d say
Outstanding thread on the impact of the UK/EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). You can read the full text here (which amusingly and alarmingly makes reference to long defunct technology services like Netscape and Mozilla Mail in what seems to be a case of legal copy pasting), and maybe also follow George Riddell, whose amazingly useful thread this is. Brainfooder Neil Carberry of the Recruitment & Employers Confederation, makes this industry specific observation.
The headlines are more outrageous than the body of these predictions, which - whilst being far out - are not surreal. Great reading to kick off the year, especially if you care about macro trends that have cascade effects on the work we do in recruiting & HR. Interactive website here, downloadable PDF here
This is the sort of deck which confirms Josh Bersin as the premier commentator of HR transformation in the enterprise. If Mary Meeker did HR, it would basically look like this. This is as much about scope as about accuracy - really is a must read for everyone. Download it here. H/T brainfooder Pedro Oliveira for the share
More data visualisations, this time from the World Bank, telling the story of 2020 in 12 charts, covering everything from the global remittance economy, shift to online education, inequalities in access to the Internet, food insecurity and - of course - massive disparities in access to healthcare
This is the post which described the hidden trillion dollar ‘office economy’ which stands to be destroyed if the work from home trend proves persistent. If you ever wanted an explanation as to why your government will soon be urging you to return to the office, this post is it.
Atomico & Slush collaboration produces the definitive annual report on the state of European tech. Comprehensive, accessible and beautifully presented piece of research. H/T brainfooder Martyn Redstone for the share in the fb group
Are we back? Depends on how well your government has handled the pandemic, which you can correlate to economic outlook in this simple country picker from the OECD, using the latest forecast data up to December 2020.
Fascinating analysis on the role of the ‘micro businesses’ in South East Asia, and how economic development is following a unique path according the local conditions of those markets. Lots to learn here, especially as 'micro-entrepreneurship’ (spoiler alert: basically what brainfood is) has been recently touted as a way out of tech unemployment apocalypse. Have a read
Big tech winning big in the pandemic era. Not that they needed Covid-19 to do so, but increased pace of tech adoption worldwide as a result of shift to remote was an accelerator even for these guys. Earnings reports from Q3 2020 released from Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet this week. New York Times article is behind a paywall but you’ve seen brainfooder Glenn Gutmacher paywall workaround yeah?
IMF’s annual report on the world economic outlook is out. Sub header is: “a long and difficult ascent”. Another must download report for everyone here; even if you don’t read this immediately, you’re going to want to have a copy of this to hand, so get it here
Big question - perhaps currently the biggest question - that we collectively need to answer; do we turn back the clock and again agglomerate towards metropolitan centres, or disperse, decentralise, equalise, with all that that must entail? Must read for folks who want to zoom out and take in the big picture. H/T to brainfooder Chad Sowash for the share in the fb group
Have you noticed the general messaging from government, corporate HQ’s, newspapers et al, encouraging not only the return to work but the return to work in the office? Lot of vested interests trying to ensure it happens, as this outstanding report from PwC on UK data reveals. Big implications for those who have to make the decision - essential reading, here
What’s the day rate for an experienced tech recruiter? Something we really could do with knowing, so maybe I need to do a survey similar to this one from YunoJuno on the creative marketplace. Accessible data on going freelancer rate for design, front-end, media etc. Must read for anyone hiring for these types of skills
On the other hand, maybe just easier if we all just go back to the office and pretend 2020 never happened? Governments worldwide certainly hope so, as they realise that national economies will crater without the ‘office worker support economy’. However, the reversal of urban agglomeration is perhaps long overdue, and if we are serious about ’levelling up’ economic disparity across national regions, perhaps it would be better smooth out the transition as best we can rather than get in the way of it. Full report from MIT, upon which this post was based, free to download here
Outstanding report from brainfooder Pawel Adrjan, Head of Research at Indeed EMEA. Massive changes in job seeker behaviour - maybe even a bifurcation of the candidate market - between those casting wider net in the super competitive industries vs those playing defence and holding on to the jobs they currently have. UK data but relevant to everybody, because we’re all in the same boat together.
Time to pivot out of recruitment? It is for many of us, so this post is timely and useful in equal measure. Echoing Mark on sourcing vs hacking earlier in this newsletter, it is an exploration of the types of non-recruiter roles a recruiter might want to look into…check it out here.
Great piece of research by Aussie Rec2Rec firm Spencer Lane on the billings of agency recruiters in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane during the Covid-19 pandemic. Be very cool to try and replicate this survey across globe….might be a something brainfood can co-ordinate. H/T to brainfooder Liz van Zyl for the share.
Volatility - as Mark Dorman explained in this week’s Brainfood Live - is the only consistent characteristic of our future. These monthly projections from IMF on the state of the global economy are an essential resource in such circumstances. H/T Colin McNicol for the share in the fb group.
NFX surveyed 286 Founders and 114 VCs to capture sentiment data during the COVID-19 crisis. No surprise that founders are more optimistic than VC’s. Lots of interesting in this report, so have at it here. Download the PDF here
Some stories are so well told that you don’t mind if they take the long route to get to the point. A tragic, personal story to illustrate what must have been a remarkable presentation. It’s about the nature of risk and, if you only read one thing in brainfood this week, read this.
Amazing thread on another landscape altering effect of Covid-19: the de facto elimination of international students - a demographic which bankrolls higher education institutions throughout the Western world - and the economies of the towns where those institutions are based. Also: this is how to write a twitter thread.
Exceptional essay, referencing 3 of the smartest economists currently in the game - Mariana Mazzucato, Carlota Perez and Stephanie Kelton. As we all had to study up on epidemiology on the outbreak of Covid-19, so we need all need to up our game on economics as we begin the exit of phase 1, of wave 1. Must read folks
Not as prolific as he once was, this deck from Dr John Sullivan marks a rare appearance in 2020. Get past the rather extraordinary slide design and there is a ton of insight for us here. H/T brainfooder Ivan Harrison for the share
Super interesting report from GWI, comparing US vs UK employer behaviour in response to Covid-19. Main headline? US companies letting more workers go per capita. Must read.
Superb slide deck from brainfooder Steph Smith - who, if she is reading this - needs to share with me a link to her talk on the subject. Presentation is good enough as it is though - macro-economic trends and they impact all of us.
With the news that US unemployment claims are hitting levels not seen since the 1930’s, it comes as no surprise that we are validating that data with our own aggregators. Some decent work again here from our buddies at Ongig. H/T to brainfooder Gordon Dent for the share
Hard to disagree with this conclusion from brainfooder Gonz Sanchez that the market will flip from seller to buyer in the post Covid-19. What does that world look like for recruiters when there are too many candidates, chasing too few jobs? H/T Guillaume Alexandre for the share
Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report is perhaps the most anticipated slide deck in the tech business world. So when her venture capital firm, Bond, sends a 28-page report to its investors, you’re going to want to read it. Full report here at Axios
Our buddies at Visual Capitalist have been one of the pioneering storytellers of era of snack-able content. Here they produce 8 charts which tells the story of the world. It’s a must read, if reading is what we can still call it….
Nik Dawson with a call to avoid oversimplifying the projections on the impact of AI / Automation on the future of work. Accessible essay summarising James Bessen’s theory on nature of demand.
Technology to be the engine of jobs growth, according to this report from LinkedIn. No surprises where the bulk of this new work is going to be: AI Engineering / Data Science / Machine Learning. Accessible report, well worth a look.
Outstanding brainfood on the relationship between apps vs platform. Which comes first, and what phase are we currently in? Counter intuitive essay from Union Square Ventures analysts Dani Grant and Nick Grant. Must read for anyone who wants to lift their head up and see the big picture.
The relationship between employment and wages has changed across the Western world. We are doing more but less valuable, work it seems. Excellent cross country comparison with easy-to-use infographic
Transcription of a brilliant speech by Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist of the Bank of England. Wider in scope than just recruitment, but relevant to everyone who cares about regional income inequality, job distribution and whether abstraction is really needed when we already have enough data to report the reality on the ground. Easier read than it sounds - trust me, it’s worth it.
Job board aggregators are the canaries in the coal mine for the economy. Steep falls recorded by Adzuna across all sectors; with gig and p/t work increase by 22.1% as employers look for flexibility and emergency workers in times of crisis. H/T brainfooder and Adzuna CEO Doug Monro for the share in the fb group.
Broader trends: software companies ascendant, Microsoft returns to top place, Chinese companies suffer from the trade war, dominance of the US companies, persistent. Check it out, here
Microsoft have been threatening to enter the HR Tech space for some time now, but things have been slow since the LinkedIn link up in 2017. No less a figure than Josh Bersin thinks the moment is now, with the release of Dynamics 365 Human Resources. Worth a read here, especially those folks in the enterprise scale businesses.
McKinsey Global Institute analysed 6000 of the world’s largest companies with annual revenue of over $1BN and present their findings in this paper. tl:dr: power law applies (which means only 20% of you will download the paper...)
Stunning interactive documentary series about our changing relationship to work and money. Interesting for its topic area and storytelling style. In only watched the piece on Bitnation, but there are others on UBI, social organisation and the rest. Have a watch / play here
Each industry has a career arc, but not all industries are created equally. Which ones are the worst and why? Stunningly presented research from Zippia, especially if you care about when your career is about to peak. H/T ‘foodie Denis Dinkevich for the share.
Amazon Web Services has become one of the most important units in the Bezos empire, with a stonking 47% share of the cloud services market. Which is a good excuse to include this amazing animated choropleth of where AWS puts it’s servers. Trust me: you like this
Booking, Entertainment & Live Events, Airlines, Casino’s and Hotels - are the BEACH stocks. On theme visual on the companies who are suffering most directly from the impact of lockdown.
The radical skewing of the economy can be seen in sorts of jobs which are in demand right now. LinkedIn have published a summary from the vacancy publications, whilst our friends at Adzuna have published this excellent tracker of search terms on their site.
Walmart employs 1.5 million people across the country - and the retail behemoth is now the largest private employer in 22 states. I have a theory that Amazon’s massive drive to hire (despite it’s simultaneous job killing automation efforts) is a Bezos masterplan to socially embed the company in the same way. Regardless, it’s a cool infographic
It’s not secret that VC funding - to the tune of $254 billion - is a major motive force for the HR / Recruitment tech industry. Things are a-changing in 2019, as this accessible report from our buddies at Toptal show.
With the hype around AI and Blockchain, it feels like we’ve forgotten a little about 3D (and now 4D) printing in 2017. It has the potential to be as significant a trend as the other two and maybe even more proximate. This is an accessible and comprehensive overview from ING - must read for anyone interested in manufacturing, logistics, retail / e-tail and trade.
Stunning video on the changes of at the top of global brands in the past two decades. The rise of tech the last decade has been as astonishing as the relative decline of companies like Coca-Cola. Here’s the 60 sec gif version for the impatient.
As we bed down to the new normal we must begin to look at what the post-Covid economy might look like. Excellent slide deck from researchers from London School of Economics, which shows us a postcard from a possible future. Entire deck is interesting but the essential bits on economic impact are from page 27 onwards.
Models of the ’shape’ of economic recovery might just be missing the most obvious one - the letter ‘I’ - symbolising that there won’t be a recovery. Sobering US unemployment data stunning illustrated by this dramatisation. It might’ve been preventable but it turns out paying people for not working is ideologically hard thing to do. Buckle up indeed.
150 years of U.S. employment history by industry. A fascinating chart from Visual Capitalist and a reminder of the truism that the only constant is change.
Candidates being charged to interview, fake job adverts, fake jobs, to recruitment agencies charged with staffing companies who have fake jobs, this is an astonishing dive into a system corrupted by imbalance in supply and demand. Sadly, a lot of it will be familiar to folks who’ve worked in recruiting businesses, anywhere in the world. It’s an incredible read and a worrying augury of a future we might all soon have to face.
Fascinating thesis on labour market mobility, and only obviously when you think about it. As more couples need two income streams to put a roof over their heads, both of them will then need a job offer in order for them to move. Additional thing to factor in when recruiting folks who need to relocate. Easy and valuable read
Mckinsey & Co at their best with this report - comprehensive and accessible with some useful models to help us scenario plan for the post-Covid world. Must read report - but as ever, remember that all models are wrong but some may be useful
As geo-industrial clusters form, they also affect labor flow by attracting the workers with pertinent skills, creating a strong concentration of skills and knowledge locally.
Fascinating research on the agglomeration effect, using Linkedin’s data on job transitions to map labour flow. Confirms what we know though - there’s a gravitational effect to network value. Quite technical but well worth a dip into. H/T ‘foodie Theo Smith for the share.
Second order effects are often greater in significance that the first order; the collapse of the global stock market will reshape the economy in the post-Covid19 world. For those who want to peak into what that future might look like, this chart from VisualCapitalist is as good a guide as any
Rare essay from brainfood Matt Charney, but it’s worth a wait - a well researched analysis of the tech hiring crisis. The advice?employers need to be remote friendly, diversify sources and train up entry level talent. Have a read here.
Dan Luu is a rare bird. A developer who writes infrequent but hugely entertaining posts on the state of the tech economy. Here he’s asking a question on developer comp and why it’s so high. NB: my view: because there’s a lot of internet. H/T brainfooder Matt Bradburn for the share
