Six-Figure Job Market Faces 'White-Collar Recession' As LinkedIn Reports 26% Drop In Engineering Roles

The tech job market is in a tough spot right now. People like Jon Bach, a former director at eBay, are feeling the squeeze. Bach worked at eBay for 13 years, but after getting laid off in January, his job search hasn't gone as planned.

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“I don’t know what’s going on,” Bach said to Business Insider in a recent interview. “I’ve been doing this for a minute and I’ve proven my value. And then you apply to one place, two places, 10 places, 50 places, 135 places. And you go, ‘Am I the guy I think I am?'” Despite applying to 135 jobs, he's received only two callbacks and no offers.

It's not just Bach. Many white-collar professionals are struggling. The broader labor market looks fine on the surface. But for six-figure earners, it's a whole different story. Data shows hiring for high-paying jobs has tanked. New data from LinkedIn highlights just how bad it is. IT hiring is down 27%. Quality assurance roles have dropped 32%. Product management is down 23% and engineering – once considered recession-proof – has fallen 26%.

Even in Bach's field, program and project management, hiring has slumped 25%. These numbers are shocking for a sector like tech. The sector once treated coders and engineers like "rare minerals." In Silicon Valley, cutting back on these roles was almost unthinkable, no matter how the economy was doing.

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What's going on? There are a few reasons for this slowdown. During the pandemic, tech companies went on a hiring spree to keep up with demand. Now, they're cutting back. Some companies turned to mass layoffs, while others opted for hiring freezes and letting natural attrition shrink their teams.

Jenny Diani, a senior recruiter at Autodesk, sees it firsthand. “Candidates are being much more careful,” she told BI. Voluntary turnover in tech is way down, so companies don't need to hire as much.

In addition, AI tools like ChatGPT are making workers more efficient. Google has said that AI generates over 25% of its new code. This means companies can slow hiring without feeling the pinch.

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The slowdown is frustrating for job seekers. Santiago Rodriguez, a data scientist, has applied to 669 positions. He even built a dashboard to track his applications. “There's so much angst,” said Jon Stross, cofounder of Greenhouse, a hiring software company, to BI.

The number of applicants per job is also skyrocketing. Greenhouse reported an average of 222 applications per job opening in early 2024, up from 77 in late 2021. With so many resumes flooding in, hiring managers are overwhelmed.

There's a glimmer of hope, though. Some experts believe the worst of what BI calls the "white-collar recession" might be over. Art Zeile, CEO of Dice, told BI that tech job openings have climbed from 144,000 at the end of last year to 223,000. While it's still below pre-pandemic levels, it's progress.

Bach is optimistic. “I think a lot of people like me are eager to get back to work,” he said. “If you take a risk on me, I'll show you that I'm worth it.”

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