I've heard some people say that it's mostly a lot of churn right now - layoffs make the headlines, but there's a healthy amount of hiring going on at the same time.
I don't really know the extent, this is a genuine question.
Anecdotally, my software dev friends who are unemployed right now are having trouble getting hired, compared to a few years ago where they were turning down interviews weekly.
[1] https://www.hiringlab.org/2024/02/20/labor-market-update-tec...
If you have those 3 things in balance relative to one another, you probably won't have too much trouble finding a job. If any one of those variables are out of whack, you'll have a hard time.
Companies are definitely still hiring. They just aren't throwing offers at everyone. More selective, and salaries/comp is down due to less companies competing for the same candidate. These issues are worse for juniors (companies less willing to invest in career training/development).
I remember the dot com crash.
The Valley and the greater Boston area got flooded with out-of-work engineers. The secondary cities still had interesting openings if you knew where to look. During the boom times, lots of interesting companies were starved for talent. When the downturn came, they started filling positions and moving ahead on interesting projects.
Look at some of the remote teams closely. Some of them are up to neat stuff, or they are just looking for the right person to open up new opportunities.
I've been having significantly more interviews and recruiters contacting me (and following up) this year.
I'm reading that there are actually more jobs being created than the layoffs are producing people looking for jobs, or, basically, like op said, layoffs make news, but the dozens of small companies hiring 1-2 people don't make the news.
So, it should still be 'ok' to find a job.
But, antidotally, all I hear is how hard it is, sending 100's of applications out and getting 1 or 2 calls.
So which is it? Is it just big correction in skills? There are jobs, but not for what people know? What is in demand?
As SRE type, I'm dealing with a ton more legacy conversion and shoring up existing systems. Still high demand for Kubernetes and Containerization but huge drop off in other stuff. WASM has almost entirely disappeared for any conversations I've been in.
My current employer (also an ESOP) snatched me up aggressively as I was over qualified for their budgeted salary. It has been awesome for both of us. I got more stability and, for once, interesting work and they got someone who could drive a new product from scratch. My contributions are really starting to punch high and win us new business, so my pay should bump back up soon. I took a chance and it seems to be paying off. My health definitely improved. I recently received my last dividend check from the S-Corp and it was not pretty--I was already bitching when it was twice as much as this last one. So their business is still on a decline despite being, traditionally, a first call from clients.