Hi there,
thanks for reading my tech newsletter about the recent buzz in tech.
Have a great week ahead!
As promised in the last issue of my newsletter, here is an analysis of the job market.
According to Indeed software development is the sector with the sharpest decline in job postings (as of Dec 29, 2023).
Job Postings on Hacker News confirm this claim.
The number of postings on Hacker News ranged in the all-time low area. In contrast, the number of people actively seeking a job increased to a new high which was only superseded by the spike at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
Comparing the Hacker News data to the FRED (St. Louis FED) data, the decline in job postings does not only appear steeper but has also set in earlier in tech compared to the overall private sector.
If we (falsely) assume all of the job postings led to a newly created job (and did not replace any), we’d see the disparity between the overall private sector and the tech sector already begins mid-2021.
Is all of that an expression of corporate greed? Like, software companies operate on high margins, and thus, any position cuts would result in higher earnings per share?
Since 2023 (after a sharp decline) that seems to be the case for NASDAQ 100 (for lack of a better proxy for the tech industry).
However, earnings per share do not reflect such a steep rise, meaning that the operating margin is not increasing and in fact, ranging below the five-year mean.
Could it just be that the tech industry is not “new” anymore? And just part of the “normal” economy? That there is not a big disparity between “old economy” and “new markets”?
Still, tech operates on higher OpEx and thus, is more sensitive to changes in interest rates.
Here are some interesting charts on the relative importance of different technologies mentioned in Hacker News “whoishiring” posts over time:
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