The technical labor market is currently in a difficult situation. People like Jon Bach, a former eBay executive, are feeling the pressure. Bach worked at eBay for 13 years, but after being fired in January, his job search is not going as planned.
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“I don’t know what’s going on,” Bach recently told Business Insider. “I’ve been doing this for a minute and I’ve proven my worth. And then you apply to one place, two places, 10 places, 50 places, 135 places. And then you ask, ‘Am I the man I think I am?’” Despite applying for 135 jobs, he only called back twice and received no offers.
It’s not just Bach. Many white-collar professionals are struggling. At first glance, the broader labor market looks fine. But for six-figure earners it’s a completely different story. Data shows that the number of people in high-paying jobs has declined. New data from LinkedIn shows just how bad it is. IT hiring is down 27%. Quality assurance functions are down 32%. Product management is down 23% and engineering – once considered recession-proof – is down 26%.
Even in Bach’s field of program and project management, hiring has fallen by 25%. These numbers are shocking for a sector like technology. The industry once treated programmers and engineers as “rare minerals.” In Silicon Valley, it was almost unthinkable to cut these roles, no matter how the economy performed.
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What’s going on? There are a number of reasons for this delay. During the pandemic, technology companies began looking for workers to meet demand. Now they are cutting back. Some companies made mass layoffs, while others opted to freeze staff and shrink their teams through natural attrition.
Jenny Diani, a senior recruiter at Autodesk, sees it firsthand. “Candidates are much more cautious,” she told BI. Voluntary employee turnover in the technology sector is much lower, so companies don’t need to hire as many people.
Furthermore, AI tools like ChatGPT make employees more efficient. Google has said that AI generates more than 25% of its new code. This means companies can slow down hiring without feeling the pressure.
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