LinkUp Forecasting Net Gain of Just 350,000 Jobs In October

U.S. job openings on company websites globally rose 6% in October, continuing the steady recovery in U.S. labor demand that began in May. New Job listings posted to company websites rose 13% while the number of jobs removed from company websites, either because the jobs were filled or the employer no longer intended to fill the opening, rose 21%.

The LinkUp 10,000, a metric that measures the job openings for the 10,000 global employers with the most job openings in the U.S. for the month, rose an identical 6% in October.

Looking at our paired-month job data which measures the change in new and total job openings for the set of companies that were hiring in both September and October, new and total jobs rose 6% and 5% respectively.

In October, hiring velocity continued to decline as average days-to-fill rose from 41 to 43 days.

In looking at The LinkUp 10,000 Daily, it’s easy to see how that decrease in hiring velocity has essentially put the brakes on the recovery in the labor market over the past 2 months and, in fact, thrown it into reverse in late September.

As we’ve done since the pandemic began, it’s also insightful to look at new job openings by state across 3 distinct time periods to gain a better understanding of exactly how and where the pandemic has impacted the country. Those periods are:

1. March 8 – May 3rd
2. May 3rd to August 30th
3. August 30th to November 1st

Between March and the beginning of May, new job openings dropped 50% across the U.S. with massive declines in every single state.

As states began to open up again, new job openings rose 76% between May and August, with significant gains across the entire country.

Since August 30th, new job openings have risen a paltry 5% nationally, with a high degree of variance across the country. I’ll leave it to others to analyze the correlation between red and green states below to red and blue states from Tuesday, but at quick glance it would appear to be material.

Given the muted increase in labor demand, the sharp rise in removed jobs back to March levels (signaling that at least some percentage of employers removed jobs not because they were filled but because they no longer intend to fill them), and the accelerating decimation of COVID, we are forecasting a net gain of just 350,000 jobs in October, well below the consensus estimate of 600,000 jobs.

Keep wearing masks and let’s count every vote.