Anyone looking to switch jobs should spend the next few weeks polishing their resume and putting their search in overdrive.
That’s because the first few months of the year are the best time for job hunters, according to one expert. U.S. employers typically finalize their corporate budgets in January and start advertising for open positions soon thereafter, said Daniel Zhao, lead economist for Glassdoor.
“The first few weeks, employers are sometimes a little bit slow to post those new jobs,” Zhao told CBS News. “It’s really as you get into the back half of January where those postings start to pick up.”
The job market has been on a tear in the last two years, with employers adding 4.5 million jobs last year and 6.7 million the year before — more than making up for losses incurred during the coronavirus pandemic. In December, employers added 223,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, a near 50-year low.
A tight job market and high inflation are spurring more workers to seek a better deal.
More than 95% of workers plan to look for a new job this year in hopes of landing higher pay, according to a survey from Monster.com. About 35% of survey respondents said they’re searching because they’re unemployed or they work at a company that doesn’t offer room for career growth.
The chance of landing a job is especially strong in the service sectors, which encompass everything from food service to professional and business services to health care services, Zhao said. Chipotle, for instance, plans to hire 15,000 more people before the spring. Other service-sector jobs are expected to grow or remain steady in coming months, according to the Department of Labor.
Despite recent layoff announcements among tech companies, Zhao noted that many workers — including tech workers — remain in-demand, although in different sectors of the economy.
“Even in tech, a lot of people don’t realize there are a lot of tech jobs that are outside the tech industry,” he said. “It’s about knowing ‘What parts of the economy are my skills in demand?'”
“It’s always a good time to get out of a bad job,” he added.
