January Jobs Recap: Labor demand grows in first month of 2023

Despite more than 100,000 reported job cuts that occurred throughout January – the largest since 2020 – our job market data is showing promising growth.

Active U.S. job listings increased a slight 0.6% month-over-month. According to LinkUp job listing data, collected daily and directly from company websites, this is the first overall increase seen since listings peaked in March 2022. Despite more than 100,000 reported job cuts that occurred throughout January – the largest since 2020 – our job market data is showing promising growth.

New job listings increased by 8.0% through January – a stark comparison to December’s 3.2% decline – and removed listings increased by 6.5% compared to just 3.5% the month prior.

Jobs Data by Industry (NAICS)

Nearly three quarters of all industries saw job listings increase, with Public Administration (15.7%), Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction (11.6%), and Management of Companies and Enterprises (8.8%) taking the lead.

Of the industries that saw declines in labor demand, Retail Trade (Sporting Goods, General Merchandise) (-15.2%), Other Services (except Public Administration) (-9.2%), and Information (-7.7%) saw the largest decreases.

Jobs Data by Occupation (O*NET)

Similarly to industry trends, 71% of occupations experienced growing job demand through January.

Among the categories that saw the largest increases in job listings are Food Preparation and Serving (7.3%), Legal (5.5%), and Life, Physical, and Social Science occupations (5.3%).

Transportation and Material Moving (-4.8%), Sales and Related (-4.7%), and Personal Care and Service (-4.5%), and Protective Service occupations (-3.9%) experienced the largest declines in job listings.

S&P 500 LinkUp Jobs Index

The S&P 500 LinkUp Jobs Index is designed to measure open jobs posted by the companies in the S&P 500 and is published on the S&P website. It can be viewed in aggregate or by sector.

According to the S&P 500 LinkUp Jobs Index, listings were down 2.4% month-over-month overall and showing declines across all sectors except Utilities, which experienced an increase of 5.4%.

Plummeting labor demand in the Financial sector observed in December (-24.3%) has slowed to a mere -4.9% through January. However, Financials still takes the lead in job listing slumps, followed by the Energy (-4.8%) and Information (-4.8%) sectors.

Methodology Update

Previously, LinkUp has filtered the data in this report to exclude particular companies every month. We are no longer taking that approach and are now reporting monthly job listing data without filtering any specific companies out.

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