March 2021 Jobs Recap: Job demand is back; returning to pre-covid levels

Job demand is back
March brought a major milestone in the pandemic recovery with job listings in the U.S. returning to pre-covid levels. (We’ll pause here for a collective ‘woo hoo!’)

We were hopeful going into March, when we noticed job listing growth was at an impressive 7.6% for January 1 through March 1—higher than it’s been for the past 5 springs. The movement we saw throughout March also left us feeling lucky (even after St. Patrick’s day) and we ended up with a monthly job count of 4,399,637.

Marching along
According to LinkUp job market data, March was a strong month overall, with a lot of gains to celebrate. 100% of states saw an increase in job listings—a vast improvement from February, when 61% of states experienced a downturn. In fact, 58% of states saw elevated rates of change with over 10% growth in job listings. 100% of industries saw strong job listings increases (all were up 8.5% – 22%), as did 92% of occupations.

Active job listings also increased over the month, up 11% in March–on the tail of February’s slight decline (-1%), March was back to the post-pandemic growth incline we were seeing previously. Created job listings increased 27% in March, after their 6% drop in February. Deleted job listings were up 33% as well.

Back to the boom
While some workers make their way back to the office, many companies are staying home to work in their pajamas—and they are thriving. While there are many variables to success, we have noticed that the tech industry does seem to be leading the policy shift around remote working, and has also seen some impressive growth following the pandemic.

In particular, we’ve been watching:
– Salesforce
– Stripe
– SPACs
– ESG

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