Tell HN: This month, job seekers outnumber job openings on HN | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: This month, job seekers outnumber job openings on HN

32 pointsmaaaaattttt5 comments

January 2024 is the first time there are more "Who wants to be hired" comments than "Who is hiring" ones. This surprised me and got me a bit worried.

I generated a graph showing the evolution of the "job market" on HN in the past few years to see if this has happened before and, no, it hasn't. The difference is striking compared to pre-2019 values even.

https://pasteboard.co/516ETSqfUQEY.png

I don't think this is a great proxy for the market in general, but maybe it is for all the fields HN adjacent.

(I know the month is not over yet, but looking at past months, most of the posts happen in the first few days of the "whoishiring" posts and the current ratio should stay the same.)

It seems HN is a lagging indicator because I would have expected this to started happening early last year not now

Yeah, I think HN might be more lagging than others. Whatever you post on HN gets parsed and put on the internet by a dozen HN job bots, so some people may be a bit shy about it. People will go to job boards first. Some will ask friends. Some are okay telling strangers they got laid off, but don't want friends and family to know.

I think another lever is that when there's lots of people on the market, salaries drop. So people would be interviewing for a month then getting lowballed into a salary they wouldn't accept. Employers have been choosy even when at a market disadvantage. I'd hate to see what it's like these days where someone out there is rubbing their hands seeing some unicorn lay off 10% of their workforce.

I've been trying pretty hard for 4 months now making it the longest I've ever been unable to get a job. I have until end of March so it's looking dicey. Had to file unemployment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38880332

I remember seeing a similar article as well and that’s why I was even more surprised. I’ll look at the numbers again in February, but there’s been definitely a trend downwards that’s not showing signs of slowing down yet - on HN at least.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com