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

• Oil industry turns up the heat on hiring – Nationally, across all industries, gross hiring in the U.S. was 4.5% higher than in May 2017. Seasonally-adjusted national hiring was up 5.3% in May from April 2018. Hiring in the oil and energy industry, on the upswing since its recent trough in mid-2016, rose by 5.2% over the past year. With oil prices at their highest since December 2014, a comparison of oil prices and industry hiring shows tight correlation: when oil prices dipped between January 2015 and February 2016, industry hiring followed suit—and a few months after oil prices began to rise, so did hiring. Hiring in Houston, the industry’s epicenter, has seen a similar trend, with strong hiring growth (+12.4%) picking up in step with the rising oil prices of the past year.

• ...and Houston’s skills surplus is tightening up accordingly –  As Houston’s job market has rebounded, the surplus of people with skills typically needed to fuel the oil and energy industry—like petroleum engineering, energy, and geology skills—has reduced, from over 16,000 people in February 2016, to under 14,000 people in February 2018. This is another signal that hiring is starting to pick up in a meaningful way for Houstonians as its core industry restabilizes. While the overall labor market in Houston has an abundance of skills, there are meaningful shortages for other skills, too. The top skills in shortage in Houston, relative to other U.S. cities, are marketing event management, construction, and non-profit fundraising.

• When a city is synonymous with a single industry, boom and bust cycles have outsized impact – Whether it’s San Francisco and the tech industry, New York City and the financial industry, or Detroit and the car industry, history shows that when industries go bust, cities reliant on one industry can be hit especially hard. Odessa-Midland, TX, one of the U.S.’s key production hubs for crude oil and a city linked inextricably with oil, is the latest example: its reliance on the energy sector makes it incredibly sensitive to the oil industry’s fortunes, even compared to a city like Houston, which has a relatively more diversified economy. With oil prices on the rise, talent inflows to this oil boom-town have picked up, particularly from the three largest Texas cities—Houston, Dallas, and Austin. This impact can also be felt in the housing market—a recent report found that Odessa-Midland had the highest national rent increase in 2017, up 35.7% year-over-year.

Oil industry turns up the heat on hiring

Hiring in the oil and energy industry, on the upswing since its recent trough in mid-2016, rose by 5.2% over the past year. With oil prices at their highest since December 2014, a comparison of oil prices and industry hiring shows tight correlation: when oil prices dipped between January 2015 and February 2016, industry hiring followed suit—and a few months after oil prices began to rise, so did hiring. Hiring in Houston, the industry’s epicenter, has seen a similar trend, with strong hiring growth (+12.4%) picking up in step with the rising oil prices of the past year.

Nationally, across all industries, gross hiring in the U.S. was 4.5% higher than in May 2017.

Seasonally-adjusted national hiring was up 5.3% in May from April 2018.

Industry Hiring

The aerospace, automotive, and transport industry saw the biggest year-over-year industry hiring increase in May (+7.5%), followed by finance and insurance (+6.4%), and oil and energy (+5.2%).

Houston’s skill surplus is tightening up

As Houston’s job market has rebounded, the surplus of people with skills typically needed to fuel the oil and energy industry—like petroleum engineering, energy, and geology skills—has reduced, from over 16,000 people in February 2016, to under 14,000 people in February 2018. This is another signal that hiring is starting to pick up in a meaningful way for Houstonians as its core industry restabilizes.

While the overall labor market in Houston has an abundance of skills, there are meaningful shortages for other skills, too. The top skills in shortage in Houston, relative to other U.S. cities, are marketing, event management, construction, and non-profit fundraising.

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 Washington, D.C., 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.

When a city is synonymous with a single industry, boom and bust cycles have outsized impact

Whether it’s San Francisco and the tech industry, New York City and the financial industry, or Detroit and the car industry, history shows that when industries go bust, cities reliant on one industry can be hit especially hard. Odessa-Midland, TX, a city linked inextricably with oil, is the latest example of this: after all, it’s one of the key production hubs for crude oil in the country. Its reliance on the energy sector makes it incredibly sensitive to the oil industry’s fortunes, even compared to a city like Houston, which has a relatively more diversified economy.

With oil prices on the rise, talent inflows to this oil boom-town have picked up, particularly from the three largest Texas cities—Houston, Dallas, and Austin. Net movements to Odessa-Midland from these cities have grown significantly since September 2017, to 0.34 per 10,000 from Dallas (750%), 1.05 per 10,000 from Houston (44%), and 1.03 from Austin (255%). This impact can also be felt in the housing market—a recent report found that Odessa-Midland had the highest national rent increase in 2017, up 35.7% year-over-year.

Overall, the U.S. cities gaining the most people are Denver, Austin, and Seattle. For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Denver, 74.8 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, 64.2 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, 591.6 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.