Economic slowdown due to soaring inflation and high interest rates is causing many businesses across the US to suspend or decrease their hiring activity, according to GlobalData, the leading data and analytics company.

Research by GlobalData’s Job Analytics database reveals that the number of new job posts declined across the US in November 2022, verses October 2022, with states such as Washington, Kentucky, Minnesota, Virginia, and North Carolina witnessing declines of over 25% month on month (M-o-M).

Further, in November 2022, the US Active Jobs Index*, declined by 7.9% M-o-M, as the number of job closures outpaced new job postings.

Srinivas Rahul, Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The number of ‘active jobs’—jobs that are available for application—has declined across all industries in the US, with companies typically closing around 13% more jobs than they post. Kentucky has seen the steepest drop in new job posts in November, at -39% verses October. In contrast, Montana and Wyoming have not changed their employment activities.”

However, despite the drop in active jobs, US hiring activity is continuing to perform better than pre-COVID-19. Company hiring was selective, seeing around 200 jobs posted for newly created roles in November 2022.

Examples of available roles posted in November included ‘Director, Talent Acquisition’ by GMS; Prudential Financial’s ‘Director, Brand Advocacy’; ‘Dir, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging’ from Dolby Laboratories; and ‘Issue Root Cause Specialist’ by PayPal Holdings. However the Buckle, Leidos Holdings, Macy’s, and Dollar General Corp were the most prolific recruiters, of US-headquartered companies, in November.

Rahul concludes: “On the other side of the coin to hiring is layoffs, and the US has seen its fair share this month. Around 90 companies announced layoffs in November, including Amazon, Cisco Systems, Roku, Capitolis, Global Foundries, and Coinbase Global.”

Data for US JOLTS Job Openings is a preliminary number for October 2022