Career Starters Today Enter a Much Improved Job Market

As Chief Economist at LinkedIn, I lead a team of economists and data scientists that unearth the most interesting insights from over 800M global members. Every month I’ll share a snapshot of key trends to help shed light on where the world of work is headed. This month, we’re looking at findings around the Gen Z workforce and career starters. 

This month, LinkedIn launched the 2022 Guide to Kickstarting Your Career. It offers a comprehensive look at where the entry level jobs are, where they are growing, and what career starters — or workers with fewer than four years of full-time work experience — need to know about today’s job market. 

The key takeaway: it’s still a great time to be looking, and job prospects for this group have made huge strides since 2020 lows. Here are few key highlights from our research on career starters and Gen Z professionals worth noting: 

Hiring Rates Bounced Up 15% for Career Starters in 2021

LinkedIn data shows overall hiring rates in 2021 recovered from pandemic lows — up 25% from 2020. And while career starters’ hiring rates still have room to catch up in the recovery, they also rebounded by 15% in 2021 compared to 2020.

Overall, it’s a strong market for entry level jobs and a good time to be searching —  employers are planning to hire almost 30% more new grads than they did in 2021, according to a survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Workers are still largely in the driver’s seat to demand more when it comes to flexibility, salary, and other benefits given the historically tight labor market. 

Sunbelt Cities Increasingly Attract Entry Level Roles

Looking at where these jobs are located, Austin, Chattanooga, Raleigh and Charlotte top our list of fastest growing markets for entry level roles. There’s a lot of upsides to these sunbelt cities attracting younger workers, given their more affordable costs of living, and oftentimes more opportunities to work remotely which we know is a huge draw —given over half of all LinkedIn job applications in the U.S. now go to remote roles. 

Entry Level Opportunities Abound in HR, Hospitality, and Health Care 

Zooming into specific industries, our data show that Staffing & Recruiting, Hospitality, and Health Care & Biotech are the sectors that saw the biggest gains in entry level job opportunities for career starters. 

Amidst the Great Reshuffle where record numbers of workers have pivoted into new roles, companies have staffed up their HR teams at an incredible rate to keep pace with the heightened focus on talent acquisition and retention. Meanwhile, Hospitality saw a huge bounce back after essentially shutting down in 2020, intensifying the need to staff back up as more people booked trips and returned to restaurants post-shutdowns. And of course Health Care continues to prove a booming sector for jobs, with roles like vaccine specialists —which made up a tiny fraction of open roles pre-pandemic — becoming one of the fastest growing jobs on our platform.

Gen Z’s Interest in Remote is Growing, but Lags Behind Other Generations 

Interestingly, when we looked at which generations are applying to the greatest share of remote jobs, Gen Z lags behind Millennials and Boomers. Yet despite this, their interest is indeed growing: 35% of Gen Z’s job applications in 2022 are to remote roles in the U.S., up from 21% in 2021. There’s a sense that this generation is still looking to retain certain elements of in-person connection and collaboration, given many entered the job market amidst the global pandemic and have yet to experience office life and on-site work. 

Gen Z is also extremely interested in flexible work arrangements - with 80% of Gen Z saying they had to take a pay cut to work flexibily, notably higher than other generations we surveyed. Younger workers are increasingly expecting flexibility (which can mean a lot of things — flexible schedule, flexible location, or other) and are willing to make tradeoffs to get the work-life set up they want. 

Younger Workers Are Investing Heavily in Learning and Skills 

Another defining trait of today’s younger generation of workers is that they see learning and skills development not as a nice-to-have, but an absolute necessity when evaluating a role. 86% of Gen Zers are engaged in online learning and about 40% of Gen Zers are willing to accept a pay cut of up to 5% of their salary for a role that offers better career growth. 

While this is a generation often criticized for being “flighty” and job hopping, our findings suggest Gen Z is clearly very career path oriented — they understand a job today leads to a job tomorrow, and are thinking critically about which new skills they want to pick up along the way. 

To go deeper on this topic, I encourage you to visit the full report here, and check out updates on free LinkedIn Learning courses and new product features here to learn more about what LinkedIn is doing to help career starters get ahead in their search. Appreciate your questions, comments, and reactions! 

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Methodology: Head to the 2022 Guide to Kickstarting Your Career for a full run-down of methodologies used to generate these key insights.