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Current job openings on a monthly basis over the last 25 years. Early 2000’s recession was over by late 2001 but job openings declined for two more years, then started to pick up and peaked in March, 2007 — a year before the onset of the financial crisis.
The crisis took about 19 months to hit the nadir, 2.2 million job openings in July, 2009. Then it rose steadily through the rest of Obama’s term (it should have, the first seven years of Obama’s terms, the Fed’s interest rate was 0.25%, literally as low as it could go) and rose steadily through Trump’s term (despite the fact that interest rates rose regularly throughout Trump’s term in an effort to slow the Trump economic engine.
The interest rate rises had their desired effect, and job openings peaked in Nov. 2018 (7.6 million) and declined slightly until COVID, then sank like a stone, reaching a bottom of 4.6 million in April 2020. I still remember my boss telling me “Mick, I learned my lesson in the last recession. You never lay off associates and you never lay off staff.” One month later, I laid off 8 of my 35 people. That year’s growth rate was 1/3rd my long term average, worst of my career, and I attribute it directly to eliminating my team members.
Job openings peaked in April, 2022 at 11.9 million, dropped to 7.1 million in September 2024 as inflation choked the economy. JO’s briefly returned to 8 million before dropping to 7.8 million when Trump took over. Dropped to a low of 7.2 million in March, rebounded to 7.4 million in April.
Second chart shows job opening growth. Highest growth rates in professional and business services.
How many job openings are there in the United States?
Source data comes from the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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June jobs report was a robust 147,000 jobs added.
June jobs report shows 147,000 jobs added; unemployment dips to 4.1%
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And the dollar has dropped like a rock, not surprisingly. Makes our imports more expensive and our exports more affordable overseas. Thing will be more expensive if you travel overseas, but more Americans want to stay put…it’s a dangerous world.
7% total drop against a basket of international currencies, leading banks are estimating a further 10% drop.
The US dollar is on track for its worst year in modern history | Semafor
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jobs data is interesting against backdrop of WSJ article this morning on CEO’s starting to talk more openly about AI-driven position elimination. unfortunately this is probably behind a paywall, but some of you may be able to read it
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-white-collar-job-loss-b9856259?mod=hp_lead_pos2
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As AI develops, it is going to stripmine the white-collar workforce at some very high levels, seriously. My profession, the legal profession, is tailor-made for this devastation.
The only thing that is holding back the pervasive and successful replacement of lawyers by artificial intelligence is…marketing.
Even without AI, the legal environment is finite. We have a finite number of laws, courts, judges, rules, etc. They change, but slowly.
AI can interpret them instantaneously — at about a paralegal’s level at this point.
There are two major drawbacks to AI. First, unfortunately, it comes with hallucinations. It gets a lot of things wrong. It misinterprets, under- or over-analyzes. Basically, it knows enough to be dangerous.
Second, it isn’t advanced enough, not yet. It can draft a contract, but it can’t review, edit or finalize a contract. It’s not there yet.
Marketing, for lawyers, has one goal and one goal only. It isn’t to position the firm as a good option, or a great option, or even the best option. It is to frame the firm as the only option.
This is quite a trick when legal training, the courts, the judges, the laws are all finite, researchable and easily understood by those well trained. And we marketers have to convince a client that our lawyers are the only ones on planet Earth who can understand the applicable laws and draw up the right strategy.
The effective outcome is that clients don’t force law firms to compete. Between 79% and 87% of all clients select law firms without requesting a competitive event. Competition alone would cut legal fees by 1/3rd. Clients leave a ridiculous amount of money on the table, and they don’t have to. Law firms have no conscience when it comes to stripping fees from clients.
One good sign: the very largest firms are aggressively working towards the day when AI replaces 85% of what lawyers do. They are building AI tools that the other firms can’t afford to do. Once they come to the realization that they can gain market share and keep their ridiculous profits while they become more efficient — a very Silicon Valley approach — then it’s game over for 3/4ths of all law firms.
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