The number of jobs available for application (‘active jobs’) continued on a downtrend in July 2022, according to GlobalData, as the rate at which jobs were closed and removed from career pages (the ‘jobs closure rate’) was higher than the rate at which new jobs were posted. The leading data and analytics company notes that this fall in active posts is likely due to employers taking a cautious approach to the economic outlook and cutting costs as appropriate.

GlobalData’s Jobs Analytics database identified a two points increase in July 2022 over January 2022 due to a high relative closure rate of 18% compared to the previous month. However, job postings declined by 9% in July 2022 over June 2022.

Sherla Sriprada, Business Fundamentals Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Companies are continuing to lay off employees due to inflationary pressures and a risk of economic slowdown. One of the causes of a reduction in new job postings could be cost efficiency within companies that are facing an extra cautious macroeconomic outlook.”

GlobalData’s research also reveals that July brought about a downturn in hiring activity in all of the sectors it tracked. Two of the most impacted were the banking & payments sector, which saw a sharp dip in July 2022, and the technology sector, which saw an 11% drop in July 2022 over January 2022.

Sriprada adds: “Many tech companies have been announcing layoffs or hiring freezes. For example, cryptocurrency exchange firm Bullish.com has joined a list of crypto companies that have announced layoffs, while Argo AI LLC, Snyk, and Amazon Web Services have laid off employees. However, GlobalData’s Job Analytics database found that some tech companies are still intending to hire. Microsoft intends to increase its headcount by the end of the financial year, and companies such as Micron and Ericsson are still hiring for cloud initiatives.”

Micron Technology’s new role, ‘Senior Director, Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE)’, would manage the overall cloud adoption, governance, architecture, and engineering across various cloud platforms deployed with Micron. Meanwhile, Ericsson is looking to hire for its latest product development unit (PDU) ‘Cloud RAN unit’, a new organization that will be leading the acceleration and creation of a cloud-native Radio Access Network (RAN) product offering with customer deployments from 2022.