HACKER Q&A
📣 garagara

Best resources for job market trends and data?


Hello HN

My wife got laid off recently and is now considering changing her career. I'm trying to do some market research about jobs and current trends.

One thing that could be very useful is a website tracking job postings and their close dates. With this data, it could show trends, popular jobs, etc. Is there a tool for:

- that aggregate job market data and present trends?

- track the lifecycle of job postings (from posting to closing)?

Beside that, what resources have you found helpful for researching emerging or declining job markets?

Any insights or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

  👤 tacostakohashi Accepted Answer ✓
Job postings are pretty much irrelevant, most big companies have "evergreen" generic postings that provide a stream of applicants to interview and slot into whatever actual roles come up after the fact, or to make it look like they're growing, etc., they do not correlate to actual specific openings or go away after a hire is made.

I'd look at BLS / other government statistics on employment, the number of employees in annual reports, visa sponsorship data, salaries, etc. as a better indication of actual hiring/employment activity.

👤 Peroni
>One thing that could be very useful is a website tracking job postings and their close dates.

Not convinced this will be useful to you. Most job boards have a default display period (typically 30 days) and it's rare that a job will be closed manually within that timeframe. Job posts on careers pages are likely to be more accurate but the data is going to be extremely tricky as a lot of career page content tends to be catch-all content to ensure an 'always on' pipeline of candidates and the teams that manage these career pages aren't always efficient at closing roles once they've been filled.

👤 aynyc
I think BLS[1] is the gold standard. But some might be location dependent. Many states have local employment offices run by the labor department.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/home.htm

👤 aitooltrek-com
Hey, sorry for the laid off - I think it is common these days. From my experience - don't stress too much about those job market data trends. They're usually playing catch-up anyway.

Jump on LinkedIn and check out their job board. It's way more useful for getting a real feel of the job market and how good/bad it is the role you want to switch. Meanwhile, I don't think you should worry about the life cycle of job posting - as this is caused by multi factors and inrelevant.

So yeah, mix it up. Look at some data if you want, but definitely spend some time on job boards. You'll get a much better feel for what's really going on out there.

👤 altdataseller
Why would you want to track the lifecycle of jobs?