Tech Workers Rebound Quickly After Job Loss

A new survey has found that most laid-off tech workers are finding new jobs shortly after beginning their search. This is due to the fact that employers are continuing to scoop up workers in a tight labor market.

According to a ZipRecruiter survey of new hires, 79% of workers who were recently hired after a tech-company layoff or termination landed their new job within three months of starting their search. This is just below the 83% share of all laid-off workers who were re-employed in the same time frame.

According to a survey by ZipRecruiter, nearly four in 10 previously laid off tech workers found jobs less than a month after they began searching.

Despite the widespread layoffs and cost-cutting taking place in the tech industry, many tech workers are finding reemployment remarkably quickly, according to Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. Pollak notes that tech workers are still the most sought-after workers with the most in-demand skills.

The job market for tech workers is slowing down as the economy overall weakens in the face of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes and high inflation. Startups and big tech companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms Inc. are laying off workers and freezing hiring, after going on a hiring spree earlier in the pandemic. The cuts are affecting tech workers like software engineers, as well as other corporate roles like recruiters.

Despite the recent layoffs in the tech industry, there are still more companies hiring than those making cuts. Job openings across the economy are down from record highs, but they still exceed the number of unemployed Americans, providing opportunities for workers who lose their jobs.

According to ZipRecruiter, a smaller share of tech workers is spending long periods searching for work after a layoff. About 5% of laid off tech workers who found jobs from April to October had spent more than six months hunting for work, down from 26% of those hired between August 2021 and February 2022.

Wen Huber, age 23, was laid off from a videographer job at a real estate tech startup in late July. Mr. Huber, who lives near Seattle, thought it would take awhile to land a new position, given the large number of job seekers in the tech market. However, he was able to find a new job within a few weeks.

"When I was applying for jobs, I didn't feel very confident because there was so much competition, with a lot of people also being laid off," he said.

Mr. Huber had saved up enough money to be more selective in his job hunt as he sought to transition into social media. He documented his unemployment experience in a series of videos on LinkedIn, which helped him land an interview and ultimately a job offer as a social media manager at a software startup. He started in September.

He said that he was surprised at how quickly he was able to secure an offer for a job.

Short job searches in tech are becoming slightly less common as the labor market slows down from earlier in the year. According to ZipRecruiter, 37% of people who recently lost a job and worked in tech previously found a new position within one month of starting to look. This is compared with 50% in February’s survey.

According to Ryan Sutton, district president at Robert Half, a global recruitment firm, hiring has definitely slowed down. However, this is to be expected, as the pandemic caused a huge spike in job creation that is now returning to normal levels. From August 2020 to May 2022, the job market was extremely active, but it is now returning to a more normal level.

Mr. Sutton said that when mass layoffs occur, there is usually an influx of tech candidates who contact his company for help with their job search.

"We haven't seen more candidates coming to market yet," he said. "Our recruiters are having to hunt and hustle just as much as they did in the last couple of years."

Client firms in the tech industry have not mentioned any plans to cut jobs, according to Mr. Sutton. This lack of job cuts is in contrast to other industries, which have been forced to make significant reductions in their workforce.

According to ZipRecruiter, about 74% of workers who were recently hired after losing or leaving a job at a tech company remained in the tech industry. Others who had previously worked at tech companies switched to firms in other industries, such as retail, financial services, and healthcare, in the six months ending in mid-October.

Pinnacol Assurance, a 650-person workers’ compensation insurer, saw a 46% increase in job candidates from big tech companies between September and mid-December, according to Tim Johnson, the company’s chief human resources officer. This surge in interest from tech workers is likely due to the growing number of companies offering remote work options.

Pinnacol has seen an influx of applicants in recent months, helping them to fill tech-related roles such as data scientist, machine-learning engineer and cloud architect. In mid-December, Pinnacol’s recruiting team made an offer to a job candidate from Google, Mr. Johnson said.

Ayanna Chapman, 42, started a new job as a systems engineer at Pinnacol in mid-November. She was previously laid off from a similar position this spring. Chapman will be responsible for overseeing the company's computer systems.

A generous severance package allowed her to take several months to freshen skills and study for certifications. When the Atlanta–area resident began looking for work in the second week of October, recruiters quickly reached out with interview opportunities.

Ms. Chapman was looking for a job with stability and thought Pinnacol would be a good fit. She received an offer from the Denver-based company about two weeks after beginning the interview process, which was much faster than her previous experiences.

Ms. Chapman said that she was overjoyed when she found out that she had gotten the job. She said that she couldn't believe it at first, and that she shed tears of happiness.

Employers are responding to job candidates more quickly than in the past, likely because they don't want to lose them in a competitive market. According to a ZipRecruiter survey, nine out of 10 respondents said they heard back from a recruiter or hiring manager within a week of applying for a job.

ZipRecruiter's most recent survey found that 2,550 U.S. residents who had started a new job within the six months ending in mid-October were cooling off. This data aligns with other job-market figures that signal the hot labor market is cooling.

According to the ZipRecruiter survey, most of the respondents who said they previously worked in tech were likely employed by tech companies, regardless of their occupation. In other words, a recruiter at Amazon would likely be classified as a tech-industry worker in the survey, while a data scientist at Home Depot would be considered a retail-industry worker.

Although employers across industries are still seeking to hire tech workers, the demand is not as high as it was earlier in the pandemic. Job postings on Indeed for tech occupations are still above prepandemic levels, but have declined significantly over the past year.

Software developer job postings on Indeed.com are down 34% from a year earlier, and ads for mathematics roles - which include data scientists - are 28% lower. Overall, job postings are down 7.7% from a year ago.

"There has been a significant decrease in demand for tech workers," said Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. "While the demand is still higher than it was before the pandemic, if the current trend continues, we may see that change in the next year."

The current economic climate may be causing employers to hesitate when it comes to hiring white-collar workers, as they are typically more expensive and require a longer-term commitment. By contrast, jobs that are lower on the totem pole in terms of pay and responsibility are usually more responsive to immediate business needs, according to Mr. Bunker.

Many companies with a high number of new tech job postings on Indeed in late November were in industries such as consulting, financial services and aerospace.

According to Scott Dobroski, an expert on careers at Indeed, the economic climate and labor market for tech jobs is still relatively healthy. He notes that there are many bright spots for tech workers outside of traditional tech companies.

U.S. aerospace companies have cut more than 100,000 workers during the pandemic, but have been hiring back at a fast clip. They have been struggling for a year with staffing shortages that have crimped supply chains.

Raytheon Technologies Corp. CEO Greg Hayes said during the summer that he was optimistic that layoffs among tech companies would start to ease his own hiring challenges. There are now signs that this is happening.

"We are seeing an increase in interest from tech workers who have been laid off," said Mike Dippold, chief financial officer of Leonardo DRS Inc. "Many of these workers are highly skilled and we are confident they will be able to contribute to our company."

Mr. Dippold said that the defense-sensor specialist still had more open positions than it would like, but that the staffing situation was starting to improve. He added that many of his peers were in the same situation.