The job market is solid right now — and other happenings in the world of work

Welcome back to The Work Shift, a weekly newsletter that keeps you informed about the economy, labor market and evolving world of work through data-driven insights. We’re back from a short holiday break. Click subscribe to be notified of our next edition.

Catch up on headlines from the last 7 days.

• Hiring climbed at the end of 2022, according to new data from the Labor Department and separate data from LinkedIn. Read more about this below.
• The share of workers who voluntarily quit their jobs rose at the end of last year, according to a Labor Department survey. That’s another sign of labor market strength.
• Pandemic darlings are responsible for the greatest share of recent layoffs. The tech companies that hired the most early in the pandemic — Meta and Amazon — are now responsible for the largest chunk of cuts over the past six months. A steady labor market means affected workers can find new jobs quickly.?
• Interest in graduate schools is set to surge, like it typically does amid economic downturns. Experts are cautioning against going back to school without careful consideration because the labor market is still strong and the cost of education is still climbing. The debt load for those who got their MBAs has nearly doubled between 2000 and 2016, for example.
• Rent prices may have hit their ceiling. Cities where prices shot up more than 30% during the first two years of the pandemic — Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa and more — are now seeing that growth stall or start to reverse.?
• The fight to hold onto New Year’s resolutions is in full swing. A recent study found that how those resolutions are framed are key to their success. They have to be specific, realistic and aim to achieve a good outcome rather than avoid a bad one. One example? Eating more greens instead of skipping burrito bowls.?

Take a closer look at recent trending topics — and engage with meaningful conversations happening on LinkedIn.

What's happening in the labor market?

• Friday’s labor market report showed continued resilience even as the Fed’s rate hikes further slow the economy. U.S. payrolls jumped 223,000 in December, beating economists’ expectations for the ninth straight month.
• LinkedIn’s Principal Economist Guy Berger called the report “unambiguously solid.” He noted that employment increased at a level just above the pre-pandemic trend while the share of prime working age Americans with a job rebounded to its March level. Sectors like tech, he said, are “bearing the brunt of the cooling we’ve seen in the labor market,” but there are some particularly bright spots like health care, education and government “that are overall holding in there,” he said. LinkedIn’s data also showed that hiring ticked up in December. This bodes well for those with career-oriented New Year’s resolutions — January and February are typically big months for job searching.
• A separate Labor Department report, out earlier last week, showed that job openings held at a relatively high level in November. There were 10.5 million postings in November, below the all-time high of 11.9 million last March, but still outstripping the 6 million unemployed Americans looking for work.?
• Positive employment reports to close out 2022 are a reason to be optimistic, according economist Orphe Divounguy. “We may not be out of the woods yet, but we have many reasons to suspect the worst economic predictions for 2023 may not materialize,” he commented. The next economic indicator to look out for is Thursday’s inflation report, he continued.

Is salary transparency on the way?

• Salary transparency laws went into effect in three more states — California, Washington and Rhode Island — at the start of 2023. At this rate, an estimated one in four U.S. workers will be covered by salary transparency laws by the end of the year.?
• Some companies, however, aren’t so eager to comply with these new laws. According to a recent survey from advisory firm WTW, about 46% of employers admitted to putting off compliance to avoid fallout from current employees.?
• Some are hoping these laws help their job search practices. “I find it frustrating when window shopping for a new job that I can’t see a sort of pay scale,” retail professional Matt Friesen commented. “I don’t want to waste my time —?or the employer’s time — applying, interviewing and maybe even getting accepted for a position, just to find out it pays $10,000 less per year than my current job.”

Is remote work past its prime?

• Fully remote work is getting harder to come by. In an analysis of over 60 million paid job postings on LinkedIn since January 2021, researchers found the peak for remote jobs was in March 2022, with over 20% of all listings offering the option. There was an abrupt decline following that spike — by November 2022, fewer than 14% of paid job postings invited remote applications.?
• Appetite for these positions, however, isn’t waning. Remote roles get as much as 50% of all job applications tracked by LinkedIn — even though such positions barely make up 15% of the total jobs pool.?
• Daniel Gode, a manager in manufacturing, commented that companies writing off remote work altogether aren’t well positioned for the year ahead. “Give employees the option to work remotely based on their role, or don’t be surprised when you are dealing with lackluster recruiting and retention,” he said. The hybrid working model, experts predict, will reign this year.

Get ready for the week by seeing what's coming up.

• Wednesday, January 11: LinkedIn Senior Editor at Large George Anders will release his latest edition of Workforce Insights, digging into jobseeker confidence levels.
• Thursday, January 12: The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the monthly Consumer Price Index for December 2022, which measures inflation through the price of goods and services.
• Thursday, January 12: The U.S. Department of Labor will release initial jobless claims for the previous week. The report, a proxy for layoffs, tracks the number of people filing for unemployment benefits.
• Friday, January 13: The University of Michigan will release January’s Consumer Sentiment Index, which measures how Americans feel about current and future economic conditions.