Finding a new job is getting harder as open positions down more than 15%: Indeed data

Employers’ hiring appetites are dwindling, as job postings were down more than 15% in 2023 compared to recent years, according to data courtesy of American employment website Indeed.

As of Dec. 29, 2023, open positions on the site declined more than 15% from a year earlier, according to data from Indeed shared with The Post.

Separately on Wednesday, the Labor Department said job openings at US employers reached their lowest levels since early 2021, as did the number of people quitting their jobs — a signal of shaky confidence in the job market.

There were only two sectors where jobs are up on a year-over-year basis: physicians and surgeons and driving, which includes long-haul and delivery drivers, Nick Bunker, an economist at the Austin, Texas-based jobs site, told The Post.

While job postings “are less plentiful” across all other sectors, “there are still plenty of jobs,” Bunker added, noting that while there’s many year-over-year decreases, most industries’ openings are up compared to pre-pandemic levels.

“Employers were really looking to ramp up and hire [post COVID]. For the most part they did and now, in many sectors, they’re becoming less ambitious,” Bunker said. “That’s why you’re seeing postings moderate.”

Indeed’s Job Posting Index, which tracked job postings as of early November 2023, showed an even bleaker drop of 22.5% from their Dec. 31, 2021 peak following a post-COVID hiring frenzy.

For reference, at the start of 2022, job postings on Indeed had skyrocketed nearly 70% from the year prior.

Since then, open positions for software developer roles reportedly took the biggest hit, plummeting a staggering 51.3% in the one-year period from November 2022 to 2023, according to Indeed.

Human Resources and communications departments in the US didn’t fare much better, each slashing its postings by roughly 35%.

And listings across IT operations, banking and finance and marketing also sunk some 33% across all three sectors.

Postings for child-care workers also declined over the past year, though there were still 46% more at the end of 2023 than during the pandemic, in February 2020, Indeed’s data showed, which was earlier reported on by The Wall Street Journal.

Similarly, postings for food-preparation and service roles dropped over the course of 2023, but were up 23% from pre-pandemic levels.

Also in recent month, figures from the Labor Department have shown a slowdown in employment growth, though US employers still managed to add a surprisingly-strong 199,000 jobs in November.

The job market’s cool-down began in October, when the month’s payroll gain came in at 150,000 — a sharp downturn from the blockbuster 336,000 jobs added in September, per data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The federal agency is set to release December’s jobs report on Friday.

According to economists surveyed by The Journal, employers likely added 170,000 jobs in December, with more than 2.7 million added over the entire year — around 40% higher than the 2019 gain. 

If there is a downturn [in 2024], the sectors mostly likely to decline are those more closely tied to discretionary spending like retail, food service and hospitality, Bunker told the news site. 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has also said that “the era of this frantic labor shortage [is] behind us.”

In December, Powell listed a variety of indicators showing the labor market had come back into balance, The Journal reported, including the number of job openings, labor-force participation rates and the rate at which workers are quitting jobs.