LinkedIn Workforce Report | United States | June 2019

Over 155 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 member of the global workforce. Whether you’re a worker, an employer, a new grad, or a policymaker, we hope you’ll use these insights to better understand and navigate the dynamics of today’s economy.

Key Insights

• Overall hiring is down in May, but the challenges aren’t evenly distributed across industries. Gross hiring was down 0.9% year-over-year in May. But looking at the industry level, hiring continues to grow in the software & IT services (+6.7% Y/Y) and corporate services industries (+7.6% Y/Y). At the same time, export-producing goods industries, like agriculture and manufacturing, are facing rapid declines in hiring: manufacturing is down 5.6% year-over-year and is at its weakest since January 2018, while agriculture is down 6.7% year-over-year and is at its weakest since November 2017.

• Entrepreneurship continues to fuel hiring, and high-growth startups are a key driver of that segment. In 2018, high-growth startups -- companies less than seven years old with more than 15% growth in employees over the past year, with a minimum of 50 employees at the end of that year -- comprised only 0.35% of all startups but hired more than 10% of all startup workers.

• Location matters for these startups: high-growth start-ups are highly clustered within a few regions. Eighty percent of high-growth startup employees are hired by companies headquartered in only 15 regions in the country. San Francisco and New York account for 40 percent of all high-growth startup hires.

• Secondary markets are developing industry niches. Provo, Utah -- which is second only to San Francisco when it comes to the share of high-growth startup hiring by population -- has a large concentration of high-growth startups in the renewables & environment space. Atlanta has a large share of high-growth real estate startups, and Denver has a large share in the oil & energy industry. These thriving secondary markets for high-growth startups could provide higher-margin opportunities for VC investors.

• The path to working at a high-growth startup isn’t necessarily technical. One factor that sets high-growth startups ahead of all startups is that they invest in talent to grow their businesses. High-growth startups hire a greater share of roles in Sales Dev, Customer Success, Business Development that require strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills, and often don’t require college degrees.       

Hiring |

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 0.9% lower than in May 2018.

Seasonally-adjusted national hiring was 0.2% lower in May from April 2019.

The industries with the most notable hiring shifts in May were Corporate Services (7.6% higher); Wellness & Fitness (7.4% higher); and Software & IT Services (6.7% higher).

Table 1: Hiring on LinkedIn, by Industry, through May 2019

Skills Gaps |

(Note: We recently updated the skills gap methodology in the LinkedIn Workforce Report to include absolute headcounts to precisely measure skills gaps. To learn more about this updated methodology, see here.)

A skills gap is the gap between supply and demand for a specific skill, in a specific local labor market, at a specific point in time. That means that skills gaps are fundamentally local, and specific to the supply and demand of individual skills within a labor market. The U.S. cities with the largest skills gaps overall are New York City, NY; San Francisco Bay Area, CA; and Los Angeles, CA.

New York City, NY; San Francisco Bay Area, CA; and Los Angeles, CA also see the greatest shortages across all skills. To see which skills are driving these massive shortages, check out our localized reports.

The cities with the greatest surpluses across all skills are New York City, NY; Philadelphia, PA; and Chicago, IL.

Check out our localized 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 top skills in demand locally and other insights.

Migration |

The U.S. cities losing the most people are Wichita, KS; State College, PA; and Bryan-College Station, TX. For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Wichita, KS, 250 left in the past 12 months.

The U.S. cities gaining the most people are Austin, TX; Denver, CO; and Charlotte, NC. For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Austin, TX, 110 arrived in the last 12 months.

Austin, TX; Denver, CO; and San Diego, CA 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, TX, 591 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 in shortage in those cities, and which jobs are open.