I run a portal with job offers for technical specialties, primarily for web professionals. We have been working since about 2005. This year is clearly abnormal compared to previous ones.

• In January 2016, on our website, it was proposed to approx. 40% less workplaces compared to the average volume of each January, starting in 2012.
• The number of seats in April 2016 was approx. half of the seats in April 2015.
• At the moment, our annual volume of proposed places is projected at 63% by 2015 and 59% by 2014.

What is going on? The million dollar question is not a very figurative expression in this case.

What do we know

This is not only on our portal. We know this because we have been tracking some of our closest competitors for several years now. Our process is quite simple: we review their sites (or sources) every morning, look at the number of applications since yesterday and add them to the table next to our daily numbers.
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Job offers on the Authentic Jobs portal (black graph) and on the portals of four closest competitors (color graphs)

The graph shows that the trends in Authentic Jobs and competitors are similar. The stream raises - or lowers in this case - all of our boats, basically the same.

What we don't know

Why! On the one hand, one can cautiously assume that the smaller number of jobs offered means, respectively, the smaller number of jobs available. We understand that companies have many ways to inform about existing jobs - social networks, recruitment agencies, employees' communication, company websites, etc. Companies can decide at any time to transmit information about jobs through these channels instead of the portal about vacancies. Thus, in fact, perhaps, the same number of jobs is available this year as compared with the previous ones, but not on the employment portals.

On the other hand, our volume trends have been very consistent and sustainable over the past four years. But in 2016, these trends suddenly lost their meaning. One can only guess now what our volume will be in the next month, and it is impossible to rely on previous data.



Offer jobs on the portal Authentic Jobs in 2016 (black) compared to 2015 (green) and 2014 (yellow)

Since previous years were relatively consistent and stable, and since the numbers of our competitors are turned off by similar measures, we can safely assume that there are fewer vacancies in the industry. This reduction is 40% or some other value, one can only guess.

When the figure for the federal report on workplaces in May turned out to be much less than that in the forecast for the United States, none of us at the main office of Authentic Jobs was surprised. In fact, it was only a surprise that only in May the months we’ve observed have emerged to the surface. The figure of the June report, which turned out to be significantly higher than the forecast , makes us think that the bulk of the increase in jobs may come from industries not related to industry.

I recently posted a Facebook post about this, and my friend responded:

I heard stories from information technology teams in enterprises of all sizes, from startups to Fortune 200, about the ongoing preparatory measures (akin to battling hatches on ships before the storm) in preparation for slowing economic growth later this year. And that was before the turmoil caused by Brexit. Curbing development, limiting costs, reducing risky product offers — and stopping hiring or slowing team growth. The markets took a hit on themselves for a while, and there is a feeling - right or wrong - that SaaS companies that have already become public, I quote, are “undervalued”; this creates the feeling that capital / venture capital will soon be harder to raise.

True, some companies continue to grow at an incredible pace. Anomalies will always exist. But if such portals about workplaces, like ours, compare with the canary in the coal mine (which warned the miners about the appearance of explosive gas), then we can say that the growth of information technology companies as a whole decreases in 2016.