Here’s what to consider if you’re actively looking for a job this fall, experts say
The season of fall foliage and pumpkin spice lattes is approaching. Meanwhile, the job market might also turning over a new leaf.
A “September surge,” or the idea that more job postings become available after Labor Day, is tied to an end of a summer slowdown as job recruiters and hiring managers return from vacation, career experts say.
“The team is never there together; there’s always someone missing,” said Cara Heilmann, president of the International Association of Career Coaches.
“It just drags things out much more during the summer months,” added Heilmann, who’s also founder and CEO of Ready Set Go, a career coaching firm.
There is, however, no hard data for the theory, explains Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
On average, the number of job openings in the U.S. does tend to fall by an average of 1.4% between August and September, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the number of hires made in the month tends to fall by around 6.0%, on average.
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Yet the fall season may be a good time to search, job experts say.
“We do see a seasonal trend in job seeker behavior, however, with a modest decline in the number of job applications submitted in September,” Pollak said.
On average, more than 20 million applications are submitted through ZipRecruiter each month, with application volumes falling 8.3% between August and September in 2022, for example. Last year, application volumes fell 12.1% between August and September.
As a result, individuals who are actively job hunting may see their chances improve as they compete with fewer other candidates, Pollak explained.
In fact, job-seeking activity tends to peak in January, with 20% more job applications started on Glassdoor than in a typical month, according to Glassdoor data from 2017 to 2020.
Meanwhile, here are some key ways to help you land that job you are after, according to experts.