Americans are job hopping, although not always by choice.
More than 199,000 global technology-sector employees have been laid off since the start of 2023, according to data compiled by the website Layoffs.fyi. The number of global tech layoffs has risen almost eightfold since mid-January.
Facebook owner Meta
META
is one of a number of tech companies making job cuts in recent months. Netflix Inc.
NFLX,
Salesforce Inc.
CRM,
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
and Alphabet Inc.’s Google
GOOGL
GOOG
have also announced layoffs. The layoffs and hiring freezes came after the Federal Reserve racked up interest rates to combat inflation, increasing the cost of business for many firms.
Former tech and media workers landed new jobs in financial services, manufacturing and hospitals and healthcare sectors, according to a LinkedIn report released this week. The report tracked thousands of workers who worked in tech, media and IT companies, and landed jobs between January and April.
More than 37% of these workers landed a job in technology, IT and media, the industries where they previously held jobs. These sectors were followed by professional services (19.6%) — which is dominated by accounting and consulting services — financial services (8.3%) and manufacturing (8%).
“Think of professional services firms as huge importers of tech expertise, which drives a lot of their consulting business,” wrote George Anders, author of the report and senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn.
“This desire to build IT and software capabilities is running strong in financial services, too,” he added. “Talent flows go in both directions.”
“Five fresh career paths stand out, and only one of them involves finding another job in tech,” Anders concluded.
Consulting and financial services companies are prioritizing software and information technology roles to build IT capabilities, he added. Manufacturing jobs include carmakers, medical-equipment makers and aerospace companies hiring roles; they’re hiring software engineers, sales representatives, and marketing and project management workers.
The good news: More than half of workers who were laid off in December and January reported that they had found a new job by the end of January, according to a ZipRecruiter survey released in March. Overall, it took those workers 7 weeks on average to find new jobs, the survey found.
The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits before Memorial Day weekend totaled a low 229,000 after Massachusetts took dramatic steps to weed out a massive increase in fraud. New jobless claims in the seven days ended May 20 rose by 4,000 from 225,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. The figures are seasonally adjusted.
Job openings fell to 9.6 million in March, the lowest number since April 2021, and down from a revised 10 million in February, the Labor Department said earlier this month. Total job openings in the private sector fell to 8.5 million in March from 8.9 million in February, the government added. Unemployment in March was 3.5%. There were 1.6 vacancies for every unemployed person in March.
(Jeffry Bartash contributed to this report.)
Related: As Big Tech cuts workers, other industries are desperate to hire them
