The most in demand sectors aren’t on LinkedIn

They don’t need to be.

In June 2022, I wrote about how layoffs hit a record low that April. 2 years to the date. Going back to the year 2000.

(The numbers have since been adjusted and it’s the second lowest number of layoffs. Only Oct 2021 was lower.)

It was a little mind-bending because all the attention grabbing headlines of big tech companies doing wide scale layoffs had already started. Sure, it picked up further, but it was in full swing.

Looking more closely at the data, the last half of 2023 – what we can hope was the absolute bottom – still had less layoffs on a monthly basis than nearly every month of the 2010-2019 boom. The H2 2023 months were in the 1.5-1.6 million range, most of the 2010s were in the 1.7-1.8 million range. Go ahead and check the data here.

Now the tinfoil hat crowd will say “the government is fudging the numbers!” But the explanation much simpler: we’re in the LinkedIn bubble, then and now.

The core ‘social’ audience of LinkedIn – recruiters, salespeople, and more broadly the tech-centric Office Dork™️ community – was in the cross hairs of it all. And that’s not to diminish it. But it explains how a lot of us can be consumed with doom and gloom yet talk to our friends in other industries who have no idea what we’re talking about. Their sectors are booming and they can’t find enough people.

I don’t want to talk about layoffs anymore. Nor do I want to rag on the LinkedIn echo chamber.

👉The fact that the LinkedIn echo chamber exists points to how irrelevant the platform is to large parts of the business community.

Manufacturing, health care, academia, skilled trades, clinicians, government, etc. These are real jobs and make up enormous parts of our job economy. And the people in these industries tend to not give a crap about LinkedIn.

On one hand, you could say it’s a growth opportunity. But if 20 years in, it hasn’t happened, I don’t see why it would start now.

And if you’re not growing in tech, your days are numbered…

Full episode of The 10 Minute Talent Rant, ep 85 “Will LinkedIn Be Dead In 10 Years?” here.

James Hornick

Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.