Over 149 million workers in the U.S. have LinkedIn profiles; over 20,000 companies in the U.S. use LinkedIn to recruit; over 3 million jobs are posted on LinkedIn in the U.S. every month; and members can add over 50,000 skills to their profiles to showcase their professional brands. That gives us unique and valuable insight into U.S. workforce trends.

This LinkedIn Workforce Report is a monthly report on employment trends in the U.S. workforce. It’s divided into two sections: a National section that provides insights into hiring, skills gaps, and migration trends across the country, and a City section that provides insights into localized employment trends in 20 of the largest U.S. metro areas: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland-Akron, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C.

Our vision is to create economic opportunity for every worker in the global workforce. Whether you’re a worker, an employer, a new grad, or a policymaker, we hope you’ll use insights from our report to better understand and navigate the dynamics of today’s labor market.

Key Insights

• Despite dip, June hiring remains strong – Nationally, across all industries, gross hiring in the U.S. was 10.5% higher than in June 2017. Seasonally-adjusted national hiring was down 7.9% in June from May 2018, but was still very robust by the standards of the current economic expansion. The industries with the biggest year-over-year hiring increases in June were aerospace, automotive, and transportation (15.6% higher); architecture and engineering (12.5% higher); and manufacturing and industrial (10.9% higher).
  

• Chinese retaliatory tariffs may exacerbate job losses in cities already losing workers – We compared the top 10 U.S. cities gaining and losing workers with their job loss sensitivity to Chinese retaliatory tariffs, as calculated by Brookings Institute. The median percentage of jobs at risk from Chinese retaliatory tariffs within this group is 0.7%. Cities losing workers are more vulnerable, with a median of 1.2% of jobs at risk. It’s possible that the tariffs could lead to additional flows of people migrating from cities like Pittsburgh and Chicago, which have consistently lost workers over the past year, to cities like Denver and Austin, which continue to add jobs and gain workers. While cities already losing workers are primed to be more impacted, one outlier in this trend is Seattle. While a top magnet for U.S. workers today, Seattle risks losing a whopping 4.6% of jobs due to retaliatory tariffs.

• Finding bright spots in the dimming telecommunications industry  –  Since 2016, U.S. hiring has increased by an impressive 22.5%. But the telecommunications industry has not kept up with this growth at all, and industry hiring has stayed flat over the same period of expansion for the rest of the economy. Telecommunications skills—which include expertise in mobile devices, wireless technologies, and audio visual systems—consequently have a national surplus of more than 23,000 people across the 100 biggest U.S. cities.  The biggest surpluses are in large cities: Dallas (3,035), Atlanta (2,931), New York (2,201) and Chicago (2,155). But there are nevertheless pockets of demand in places with shortages of telecommunications skills: San Francisco (3,656) and Seattle (3,688) lead the list, followed by Los Angeles (357) and Austin (326).  Even for skills associated with an underperforming industry, there are places to find economic opportunities.

   

Despite dip, June hiring remains strong

The LinkedIn hiring rate is a measure of gross hires divided by LinkedIn membership. Nationally, across all industries, gross hiring in the U.S. was 10.5% higher than in June 2017. Seasonally-adjusted national hiring was down 7.9% in June from May 2018, but was still very robust by the standards of the current economic expansion.

Seasonally-adjusted national hiring was down 7.9% in June from May 2018, one of the biggest month-over-month dips over the past two years. That said, May was so strong that even after this large decline, hiring in June was still very robust.

Different economic indicators represent complementary facets of the jobs picture. In its monthly Employment Situation report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) similarly reported that the U.S. economy added 213,000 jobs in June—a decline of 12.7% from May’s gain of 244,000 and 10.9% from June 2017’s gain of 239,000, but still a solid number. While the LinkedIn hiring rate measures gross hiring, the Employment Situation report measures net job gains. Net job gains are equivalent to gross hiring minus gross separations— and gross separations is the number of people who ended jobs, either through (involuntary) layoffs or (voluntary) quits.

That subtle difference in methodology explains why our gross hiring measure is up in year-over-year terms even as net job gains were down year-over-year:  When the economy is really strong—as it is today—more people quit their jobs for new (usually better, higher-paying) jobs. This doesn’t impact “net job gains” because the old job and the new job cancel each other out  and no “net new” job is created. But it does get counted as a gross hire - and is therefore captured in the LinkedIn hiring rate.

Industry Hiring

The industries with the biggest year-over-year hiring increases in June were aerospace, automotive, and transportation (15.6% higher); architecture and engineering (12.5% higher); and manufacturing and industrial (10.9% higher).

Chinese retaliatory tariffs may exacerbate job losses in cities already losing workers

The U.S. cities that are already losing workers to outward migration are generally more vulnerable to job losses than the cities successfully gaining workers today.

We compared the top 10 U.S. cities gaining and losing workers with their job loss sensitivity to Chinese retaliatory tariffs, as calculated by Brookings Institute. The median percentage of jobs at risk from Chinese retaliatory tariffs within this group is 0.7%. Cities losing workers are more vulnerable, with a median of 1.2% of local jobs at risk. It’s possible that this could result in additional flows of people migrating from cities like Hartford and Norfolk, which consistently have lost workers over the past year, to cities like Denver and Austin, which continue to add jobs and gain workers.

While cities already losing workers are primed to be more impacted, one outlier in this trend is Seattle. While a top magnet for U.S. workers today (#4), Seattle risks losing a whopping 4.6% of jobs due to retaliatory tariffs. Nashville, at #6, also has a fair amount of vulnerable jobs. And for cities already losing talent today, a few locations—Hartford, Norfolk, and Baltimore—may have talent exodus problems, but those aren’t likely to be exacerbated by retaliatory tariffs.

Table 1: Risk of job losses in the  top 10 U.S. cities gaining the most workers

Table 2: Risk of job losses in the top 10  U.S. cities losing the most workers

Overall, the U.S. cities gaining the most people are Denver, Austin, and Las Vegas. For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Denver, 70.6 arrived in the last 12 months.

The cities losing the most people are Hartford, Providence, and Pittsburgh. For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Hartford, 58.1 left in the past 12 months.

Austin, Orange County, and San Diego are the U.S. cities experiencing the most total migration (workers moving into and out of a city). This list captures the most transient cities. For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Austin, 552.3 arrived in or left the city in the last 12 months.

Check out our reports for Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland-Akron, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C., to see which skills are most scarce in those cities, and which jobs are open.

Finding bright spots in the dimming telecommunications industry

Since 2016, U.S. hiring has increased by an impressive 22.5%. But the telecommunications industry has not kept up with this growth at all, and industry hiring has stayed flat over the same period of growth for the rest of the economy. Telecommunications skills—which include expertise in mobile devices, wireless technologies, and audio visual systems—consequently have a national surplus of more than 23,000 people across the 100 biggest U.S. cities.

The biggest surpluses are in large cities: Dallas (3,035), Atlanta (2,931), New York (2,201) and Chicago (2,155). But there are nevertheless pockets of demand in places with shortages of telecommunications skills: San Francisco (3,656) and Seattle (3,688) lead the list, followed by Los Angeles (357) and Austin (326).  Furthermore, relatively tiny skills shortages in Salt Lake City (89), Provo (50), Grand Rapids (14), and Lincoln (13) show that even for skills associated with an underperforming industry, there are places to find economic opportunities.

Skills gaps like these are fundamentally local, and specific to the supply and demand of individual skills. There is an abundance, or surplus, of skills when supply exceeds demand. There is a scarcity, or shortage, of skills when demand exceeds supply. A city with a scarcity of skills needs more people with certain skills, while a city with an abundance of skills has too many people with certain skills.

Skills gaps can be narrowed by people moving to cities where their skills are in demand; by businesses opening up shop in cities where there’s an abundance of the skills they need; by training people to learn the skills that are in demand from employers; and by employers offering higher pay for in-demand skills. In order to narrow skills gaps, cities should seek to understand the dynamics of their own labor markets and create policies to align education and training with employer needs.

The U.S. cities with the largest skills gaps overall are the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., and Austin. Each of these cities has a scarcity-driven skills gap, which means there is a high unfilled demand for workers with certain skill sets such as healthcare management, or education and teaching. To see which other skills are in scarcity, check out our San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., and Austin reports.

The San Francisco Bay Area, Austin, and Denver have the greatest scarcity of skills, relative to other U.S. cities. For details on which skills are in high demand, check out our localized reports.

The cities with the greatest abundances of skills, relative to other U.S. cities, are West Palm Beach, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, and Hartford.

Check out our reports for Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland-Akron, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C., to see which skills are most scarce in those cities, and which jobs are open.