September 2024 Jobs Report

Public Insight’s September 2024 Jobs Report summarizes market insights from the millions of job postings, resumé updates and employer ratings/reviews available in our TalentView platform in addition to broader labor and macroeconomic indicators.

Key Takeaways from the September 2024 Jobs Report

• Job posting volume declined 12.2% in September and was at the lowest point in 2024.
• Volume declines range across industry sectors with exceptions in Administrative and Transportation sectors. Technology appears poised for a rebound.
• Fill Days based on the trailing fifteen months activity increased from 53 to 55 days, fill rates declined and open rates increased. This suggests difficulty in filling existing jobs.
• Open Days has remained steady at 115 days, but a higher number of jobs are still open. A sizable number of jobs from the late summer remain open.

Posting Volume

Job postings declined 12.2% in September and represent the lowest monthly point thus far this year.

The market has been in a bit uneasy, but there are some signs that we may have reached the bottom with growth on the horizon.

• Urgency rates in ads have approached near zero % (pandemic levels were 40%).
• Sponsorship rates have crept back up with sponsored ads reaching one of the highest level this year.
• Remote rates, after trending down for most of 2024 popped up to near 2024 highs in September.
• Fair chance jobs, a measure of reaching underserved populations, also reached 2024 highs.

Posting volume declines range across industry sectors with several exceptions.

• Biggest declining industries were Accommodation Services, Transportation Logistics, Government, and Education each with declines above 20%.
• Only Administrative and Support Services showed growth in September.
• Hospitals and Health Care which had shown resilience declined to a low point in the year.

Fill Days

Fill days use ad expiration and ad removal to determine a presumptive hire. When measured over a prolonged period of time and over millions of postings, this metric provides a strong glimpse of the overall market. The trailing fifteen months is used as a time horizon for our analysis. Average fill days across the last 15 months ticked up from 53 days in June to 55 at the end of September. In the graph below, we show the average fill days by month along with the percentage of ads that have been filled. Obviously, the newer ads have a lower fill rate.

It is important to focus on the early part of the year from February to July when the vast majority of the jobs are considered filled. Here, the fill days has steadily increased from the low forties to the mid to high forties.

Open Days

Open days are postings that are still determined to be open. We track every job posting uniquely and ascertain its fill status on a weekly basis. Generally, we have found that six to nine months to be a suitable time horizon to evaluate the open days. Older postings may distort the open days as they may represent “evergreen” postings.

Open days as a composite for the last six months remained steady at around 115 days from the last time we measured in June. However the percentage of open ads for the past six months has climbed from 29.1% to 37.1%,

The open posting aging shows the composition of open ads by month. When overlaid across June ads, the aging shows a fairly high composition from mid to late summer. July and August represent nearly 40% of open postings. This compares unfavorably to when we measured in June when the postings from comparable periods was only 30%. Summer may be a difficult comparison period, because of vacations, but it does suggest that jobs may now become increasingly harder to fill. This is despite the fact that employers do not seem to feel a sense of urgency to fill open positions.

Key Compensation Takeaways

• September compensation increased 2.2% in September and is up 11.7% for the trailing twelve months.
• Strong recent gains are concentrated in Manufacturing and Financial Services sectors.?
• Over the past twelve months, compensation has increased 11.7%. Compensation gains may be influenced by job mix.

Compensation Composite

Compensation increased 2% in September vs. August to $57,200 on a composite basis across all job postings, and has increased 11.7% over the trailing twelve months.

Compensation by Industry Sector

• Generally all sectors have experienced meaningful growth in compensation over the last twelve months.
• Manufacturing and Financial Services have both increased over 20% over the past twelve months.
• Surprisingly, after an early year slump, Technology has rebounded nicely and is now up 17.1%.

Key Supply and Demand Takeaways

• Healthcare supply imbalances continue with the gap getting worse.
• Accommodation Services and Retail have now flipped from supply heavy to demand heavy over the past quarter.
• Transportation, Logistics, Financial Services, and Wholesale are showing a trend towards unmet worker demand.

While the labor market remains robust there are still acute shortages of workers in certain sectors. We measure relative supply demand using net openings against resumés by sector.

Supply/Demand Chart

To highlight supply/demand imbalances, we superimpose job seekers based on resumés (arrow graph) against net job openings in the black bar (hires based on unique postings). The graphs highlight supply surplus (more job seekers than net postings) shown in green or supply shortage (less job seekers than net postings) shown in red. We picked a time horizon of nine months which highlights the current market surplus or shortage. The Total bar reflects the summaries of openings and resumés for that time period.

Supply/Demand Scorecard

We indicate the current state at the end of September as well as highlight in yellow the most recent changes over the last quarter. A change is not necessarily good or bad, but we have highlighted changes in supply/demand gaps that significantly impact the current trends.

Key Worker Sentiment Takeaways

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) has declined to 12-month lows although the downward movement has leveled off over the past few months.
• Communication and management continue to be the subjects that employees cite negatively while team, culture, and benefits are cited positively. These continue to trend downward to 15-month lows.

Net Promoter Score Nosedives to New Low

Net Promoter Score took a nosedive in June to 15.8. Thankfully, it has leveled off over the past quarter. Net Promoter Score is measured based on the percentage of positive reviews over negative reviews. A score of 15.3 means there are only marginally more “fans” than there are “detractors.” NPS score is measured with a number ranging from -100 to +100, where a higher score is desirable.

Note that in our TalentView analysis we found that both positive and negative reviews declined proportionately over the last twelve months. It is the neutral reviews that have significantly increased. It is as if workers are taking a wait and see as their employers grapple with new expectations, a tightening labor market and workplace policies.

Opinion Mining Suggests Communication Gaps

The following graph displays the top subjects that employee reviews cited negatively. Communication and management suggest correctible issues. Each of these areas has declined around 10% (increased negativity) over the past fifteen months. We have noted recent improvements in training often perceived negatively.

Top positive subjects include teamwork, coworkers, people, and benefits. A positive, endearing culture is so important to today’s employee. Unfortunately, culture and environment, while still positively perceived, have declined in positivity in recent months.

Key August Labor Market Takeaways

• Job Openings were up 4.3% in August compared to July. However, this broke a three-month losing streak and a general downward trend. The job opening rate is now nominally higher than pre-pandemic levels.
• Hires suggest a continued softening of the labor market. Hires declined 1.8% from July and are 23.1% below the peak in February 2022. The hire rate at 3.3% is below the historical levels of 2015 of 3.6-3.8%.
• Hire declines in August were across industries. Exceptions were Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation (up 4.0%), and State and Local Government (up 1.3%).
• Geographically, the South region experienced hiring growth in August at 10.1% while the other four regions experienced declines.
• Small businesses (1-9 employees) also are bucking the hiring trend as this classification increased 13.5% in August. Mid-size companies (250-999 employees) also increased 2.3%.
• Layoffs declined 6.1% in August and are now well below historic averages. We have not heard of large layoffs in the news recently.
• Quit rates are at historic lows at 1.9%. By comparison at the height of the pandemic, quit rates were 3.0%. The market is signaling it’s in a sit tight and wait and see approach.
• An exception to the quit rate declines is Finance and Insurance where quit rates increased from .9% to 1.4% in August.
• Unemployment rates continue to be low by historical standards at 4.4%. August decline broke a three-month negative trend moving down slightly from 4.5%. This remains well below the January 2015 level of 6.1% yet modestly above the pre-pandemic low of 3.3%.

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