Demystifying the Latest US Jobs Report

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released December job data that shows a continued employee-favored job market. 

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What changed?

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December 2021:

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• Unemployment is below 4%, the lowest it's been since before the pandemic 📉
• Professional jobs and employment have continued their upward trend with 43,000 new jobs added in December alone 🚀
• Less jobs than anticipated were added overall, likely due to COVID-19 trends and high number of new daily cases.
• For every unemployed American, there are now 1.4 jobs. (Source: USNews)
• The same number of people (11.1%) worked remotely because of COVID-19 reasons.

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All of 2021:

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• 6.1 million jobs were added (total)
• 20 million people quit their jobs in the second half of 2021
• People quitting their jobs are coming from all sectors of the US labor force, showing a widespread "Great Resignation" or "Great Reshuffle"
• Nearly all (84%) of the total jobs lost in the pandemic have been recovered.

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What does this mean for job searching and job outlook?

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Dr. Karin Kimbrough, LinkedIn's chief economist and former director at the U.S. Federal Reserve spoke to CBS News saying, "There is one person hired every 15 seconds right now on LinkedIn."

Take that as a dose of optimism for your job search ☀️

Dr. Kimbrough also points out a fascinating remote work statistic: before the pandemic, 1 in 67 jobs was listed as remote on LinkedIn, and now 1 in 7 jobs is. She also believes this trend could end up being permanent 💻

Here at Teal, we've seen month over month a steady growth in the percentage of remote jobs saved out of all jobs saved to our Job Tracker.

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Is it still a good time to job search?

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Employers are struggling to find new employees and retain existing employees. If you're thinking about getting a new job, this could mean more money in your pocket .

If you're ready to start looking for a new job or want to get back to it, now's the time! 

Check out Teal's free suite of job searching tools. Kick off your job search with our Job Tracker, a free tool that uses our Chrome extension to save jobs from any job board. We analyze job descriptions, tell you which keywords matter most, track follow ups, and organize everything in one central location.