Can’t find a job? It’s not you, it’s white-collar America.
Laptop jobs are harder to find than they used to be.
If you’re struggling to find a job, perhaps you can take solace in an age-old saying: It’s not you. It’s the labor market.
Sure, you’ve experienced some high highs. The era of the Great Resignation and zero interest rates meant corporate America was practically handing out jobs — and big raises to boot.
But that era is long gone. Interest rates are up, mass layoffs have roiled some industries, and raises are far more paltry. The release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest employment report on Friday put the final nail in the coffin. While skilled vocational trades like health services and construction were big drivers of job gains in August, sectors like information, which encompasses tech and white-collar fields, haven’t fared as well.
“A couple years ago, every industry was growing really quickly, and there’s all these great opportunities across the board,” Nick Bunker, the economic research director for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told B-17.
But that’s not the case anymore.
With the cooler labor market, Bunker said, there isn’t a “clear industry” you can argue will have much more job growth. And so-called laptop jobs — the kind where workers can theoretically log in from anywhere — are particularly imperiled. Roland Hesmondhalgh, a 32-year-old in Virginia with a master’s degree, previously told B-17 that he was stuck between being overqualified for roles he applied to and still not landing interviews.
“It does feel like we’re on this two-track labor market,” Aaron Terrazas, the chief economist at Glassdoor, told B-17 before the release of the latest employment report. The demand for frontline work is still there, he said, and there are still challenges in filling those positions and roles in skilled vocational trades.
“That’s the opposite case when it comes to skilled knowledge work, white-collar office work or home office work — there is a lot more labor supply there and a lot softer demand,” Terrazas added.
Job openings in the information sector fell by more than 40,000 from July 2023 to July 2024. In July 2023, the job-opening rate in information was 5%; by this July, it had tumbled to 3.6%. And while job openings did fall in sectors like construction and healthcare, the total number of openings still far exceeded those for information roles.
This tells us the market for white-collar workers is a stayer’s, not a seeker’s, market.
“This is a labor market where if you have a job you like, you’re in a pretty good position,” Julia Pollak, the chief economist at ZipRecruiter, said. “If you don’t have a job, if you’re a new grad, finding a job is actually unusually difficult — especially in the private sector outside of healthcare.”
