Job openings in the US just climbed to their highest level in nearly two years, according to the latest JOLTS data. On paper, that sounds simple: more openings, more opportunity. But if you’ve been hiring or job searching lately, you already know it’s not that straightforward. This jump in openings is a signal. It tells us something about where the labor market is heading, and it has real consequences for how quickly roles get filled, how competitive compensation needs to be,

The headlines say the U.S. economy just logged its third straight month of strong job growth, adding around 172,000 jobs in May. Sounds great. But if you’re a job seeker who’s been sending out resumes with little response, or an employer struggling to fill the same role for months, it might not feel great. That gap between the numbers and the lived reality is exactly where job seekers and hiring managers get tripped up. The labor market looks strong on paper Let’s start with

The May 2026 jobs report looks strong on the surface. Payrolls are up again, headlines are positive, and on paper it feels like the labor market is still humming along. But if you work in hiring or you’re out there job searching, it probably doesn’t feel nearly as simple as that. Indeed Hiring Lab’s breakdown of the May report points to something most recruiters and candidates are already sensing: we’re living through two different labor markets at the same time. One headline

Everyone’s blaming AI for the collapse in early-career hiring. But if you look a little closer, there’s another quiet culprit: the way we’re doing remote and hybrid work. Entry-level pipelines haven’t dried up because we suddenly don’t need junior talent. They’re shrinking because we’ve made it incredibly hard to grow junior talent in the environments we’ve created. AI Is the Distraction. The Real Issue Is Proximity. There’s a lot of noise right now about how automation and A

Every May and June, my inbox fills up with some version of the same sentence: “I’m targeting roles in the $80,000 range.” This year, that number is everywhere. As USA Today reports, many new college graduates are walking into the job market expecting around an $80K starting salary. The reality? Entry-level compensation is all over the map, and in a lot of cases, it’s lower than that — sometimes significantly, depending on the role, industry, and region. When expectations and

On paper, the U.S. job market looks solid. Unemployment is low, headlines say the labor market is “resilient,” and big-picture data still points to growth. But if you’re actually job hunting right now, it might feel like a completely different reality: longer searches, fewer callbacks, more hoops to jump through, and companies that seem wildly picky about experience and skills. Both of these things can be true at the same time. The weird gap between data and reality Most labo