LinkedIn Workforce Report | United States | March 2021

Over 176 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 36,000 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 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

• While we haven’t quite reversed the declines we saw in December and January, we are continuing to see an uptick in hiring across industries. Most notably, our data shows nine industries now have hiring rates above pre-COVID levels. This is the most recovery we’ve seen to date. Software & IT Services (+8.5%) tops our list of largest year over year gains, with Transportation & Logistics (+5.9) and Wellness & Fitness (+5.8) rounding out the top three.

• As we look at the cities that are faring best nationally, we see strong hiring in two cities, Miami and Atlanta, both of which have surpassed their hiring levels pre-COVID. Miami, has seen a 1.9% increase in hiring over the last year and Atlanta has seen a 0.2% increase in our YoY data. Since last month, all but one city has seen an increase in hiring (Austin -2%), with Atlanta and Los Angeles seeing the greatest increases at +10.1% and +9.9, respectively.  

• Meanwhile, traditional knowledge hubs like San Francisco and New York City are starting to recover. San Francisco continued to expand hiring during the winter months even as national hiring contracted. Since last month San Francisco has increased hiring +5.8%, and New York City increased hiring by 6.3%.

• Vulnerabilities such as the impact of Texas’s infrastructure implosion during the third week of February also appeared to impact hiring trends in the 3 Texas cities (Austin, Dallas, Houston), which had the weakest hiring gains in February in comparison to top 20 cities analyzed.

Hiring

The LinkedIn hiring rate is a measure of hires divided by LinkedIn membership. Nationally, across all industries, hiring in the U.S. was 2% lower than in February 2020. National hiring was 1.8% higher in February from January 2021.

The industries with the most notable hiring shifts month-to-month in February were Recreation & Travel (27.8% higher m/m); Entertainment (19.5% higher m/m); and Construction (11% higher m/m).

Table 1: Hiring on LinkedIn, by Industry, through February 2021

Migration

The U.S. cities losing the most people are Bryan-College Station, TX; State College, PA; and Urbana-Champaign, IL. For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Bryan-College Station, TX, 244 left in the past 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 jobs are open.