Laid-off workers find new jobs quickly

Nearly four in 10 of those who had previously been laid off found a job less than a month after starting their search, Zip Staff found in its survey..

“Despite rampant layoffs, hiring and cost-cutting in tech, many tech workers are rehiring at an impressive rate,” said Julia Pollack, chief economist at Zip Recruiter. “They are still the most sought-after workers with the most in-demand skills.”

The number of job openings in the economy – at 10.3 million – fell from a record high, but far outnumbered the number of Americans out of work, providing opportunities for workers who lost their jobs and those who chose to look elsewhere.

Workers previously employed in other industries such as entertainment and recreation, transportation and logistics, and manufacturing also quickly found new jobs, according to ZipRecruiter data.

The job market for tech workers is shrinking as the broader economy faces interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and high inflation. Like Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. Layoffs and hiring freezes are occurring at startups and large tech companies that have been heavily recruiting during the pandemic. The cuts are hitting workers in tech jobs—like software engineers—and other corporate roles, including recruiters.

Still, tech companies outnumber people hiring.

A small proportion of tech workers spend long periods of time looking for work after being laid off. About 5% of laid-off tech workers who found work between April and October spent more than six months on the job hunt, compared to 26% of those hired between August 2021 and February 2022, Zipkruter said.

Wayne Huber, 23, was fired from a videography job at a real estate technology startup in late July. Mr. Huber, who lives near Seattle, thought it would take time to land a new job because he didn’t have a four-year college degree and many other job seekers were flooding the tech job market.

“Honestly, when I applied, I didn’t feel confident because there was a lot of competition that people were getting fired from.

Mr. Huber had built a buffer of savings that allowed him to be more selective in his job search when he wanted to get into social media. He documented his unemployment experience in a series of videos on LinkedIn. The videos helped him land an interview for a social media manager job at a software startup and eventually get the offer, Mr. Huber said. It started in September.

“I was surprised at how quickly I was able to find a job,” he said.

Short job searches in tech have slowed slightly as the job market slowed earlier in the year. 37% of people who have recently lost a job and previously worked in tech found a new position within a month of looking, according to Zip Recruiter. That compares to 50% in the February survey.

“We’ve definitely seen a slowdown in hiring, but that’s because the level of job creation is at an all-time high because of the slingshot effect of the pandemic,” said Ryan Sutton, district president of Robert Half. “It was not red hot from August 2020 to May 2022. It was very hot. “

Mr. Sutton said that often when there are mass layoffs, tech candidates contact their companies to help them in their job search.

“We haven’t seen it yet – we haven’t seen more candidates come to market,” he said. “Our recruiters need to hunt and disrupt as much as they have in the last two years.”

Client firms in tech also have no plans to cut jobs, Mr. Sutton said.

According to Zip Recruiter, 74 percent of those who recently lost or left a job at a tech company stayed in the industry. Others who previously worked at tech companies switched to companies in industries such as retail, financial services and health care in the six months that ended in mid-October.

Pinacol Insurance, a 650-person workers’ compensation insurer, saw a 46 percent increase in candidates from major tech companies including Meta, Microsoft and Twitter between September and mid-December, said Tim Johnson, the company’s chief human resources officer.

An influx of applicants has helped Pinnacol fill technology-related roles such as data scientist, machine learning engineer and cloud architect in recent months. In mid-December, Pinacol’s recruiting team approached Google about the job, Mr. Johnson said.

Ayanna Chapman, 42, started a systems-engineering job at Pinacol in mid-November, overseeing its computer systems, after being laid off from another systems-engineering position this spring.

A generous severance package allowed her to take several months to develop skills and acquire certifications, including the Python programming language. When the Atlanta-area resident began looking for a job in the second week of October, employers quickly reached out to interview opportunities, she said.

Mrs. Chapman was interested in finding a stable job and thought Pinacol would be a good fit. Two weeks after starting the interview process, she received an offer from a Denver company, which she said was much quicker than previous internships.

“I literally cried tears of joy, ‘Oh my God, I got the job. I can’t believe it,’ said Mrs Chapman.

Employers are responding quickly to job candidates, perhaps out of fear of losing them in a competitive market with a historically low unemployment rate of 3.7%. Nine out of 10 Zip Employee Survey respondents said they heard back from a recruiter or hiring manager within a week of applying for a job.

The Zipptercruiter survey was drawn from 2,550 US residents who had started a new job within six months in mid-October. The data is consistent with other labor market figures that suggest the hot labor market is cooling.

Of the respondents to the ZIP employee survey who said they had previously worked in technology, Ms. Polk said, most had worked for technology companies, regardless of their occupation. In other words, an employee at Amazon could be classified as a tech industry employee in the study. But at Home Depot, a data scientist becomes a retail-industry worker.

Various labor market statistics show that employers in the industry are still looking to hire tech workers, although at a lower rate than before the pandemic. Workplace postings are, of course, still well above pre-pandemic levels for tech jobs, but have fallen sharply in the past year.

Software developer job postings are down 34% from a year ago, and postings for accounting roles — including data scientists — are down 28%. Total posts are down 7.7% from a year ago.

“With tech workers, it’s a pretty big pullback,” said Indeed Hiring Lab economist Nick Banker. “It’s still above pre-pandemic levels, but I don’t think the talking point will be true sometime next year if current trends continue.”

The uncertain economic outlook is weighing on employers’ appetite for white-collar workers, as they base hiring plans on a long-term business outlook for high-wage workers, Mr. Banker said. In contrast, organizations often hire servers, vendors and other low-paying jobs as urgent business needs, he said.

Many companies with the largest share of new tech job postings at the end of November were in industries such as consulting, financial services and aerospace.

“It’s still a relatively healthy economic climate and a relatively healthy job market for tech jobs,” said Scott Dobrowski, a career expert. “A lot of the bright spots for tech workers right now are outside of traditional tech companies.”

U.S. aerospace companies cut more than 100,000 jobs during the pandemic, but are hiring at a rapid clip and have struggled for a year with labor shortages that have weakened supply chains.

Raytheon Technologies Corporation

CEO Greg Hayes said he was optimistic that layoffs among tech companies over the summer would begin to ease his own hiring challenges. There are signs that it is happening.

Mike Dippold, chief financial officer of Leonardo DRS, said: “We are starting to see a lot of interest in the technology. Inc.,

Based in Arlington, Va.

Mr. Dippol said the defensive-sensing specialist, like many of his peers, still has more openings than he needs, but the staffing situation is starting to improve.

— Doug Cameron contributed to this article.

Write to Sarah Chaney Cambo at sarah.chaney@wsj.com and Gwynn Guilford at gwynn.guilford@wsj.com