US Q3 2024 Business-to-Business Labor Market Update: Still Waiting for a Rebound in Software – Indeed Hiring Lab

The Indeed Hiring Lab tracks business-to-business (B2B) employment trends, analyzing the latest Indeed data. We examine overall labor market trends and dive deeper into job posting trends in various B2B occupational categories. Finally, we focus on recent developments in layoffs and worker turnover.

Takeaways: 

• The consistent decline in job postings that began in early 2022 showed signs of leveling off in Q3 2024. As of October 18, job postings were 10.8% above pre-pandemic levels. 
• Job postings for software developers fell below pre-pandemic levels in Spring 2023, and remained almost 33% below pre-pandemic levels as of October 18.
• Software Development wage growth has picked up, climbing one percentage point in the last six months.
• Pay transparency — measured as the share of job postings within a given sector that contain some information on proposed pay — increased over the past year in all B2B sectors except Construction. 

Indeed job postings 

Despite being down 13% from a year earlier, the US Indeed Job Posting Index (JPI) remained 10.8% above pre-pandemic levels as of October 18. After declining consistently since early 2022, the US JPI showed signs of stabilization over the summer, hovering in a tight range between 10% and 13% above pre-pandemic norms for several months. This suggests the cooling in demand for workers over the past several years has paused, at least for now, leaving some employers facing a bit less competition when looking to make hires.

Business-to-business postings 

Job posting trends inside the broader B2B vertical cover a wide range of segments and industries. Job postings in the Insurance sector, for example, have held up relatively well, declining only 3.5% over the past year and remaining 32% above their pre-pandemic level. Software Development postings, on the other hand, have declined 11.1% in the past year and remain almost 33% below pre-pandemic levels. 

Business-to-business wage growth 

Wage growth in the B2B vertical was a bit of a mixed bag. Posted salaries for Education & Instruction roles grew 4.6% year-over-year in September, well above the labor market average of 3.3% over the same period. And while overall annual posted wage growth for Software Development jobs lagged well behind (at just 1.4%) in September, it picked up over the summer, climbing one percentage point between March and September. 

B2B pay transparency 

While momentum towards higher levels of pay transparency may have slowed, a clear majority (57.8%) of job postings on Indeed featured information on wage or salary in September. For the most part, sectors in the B2B vertical are not quite as pay transparent as the overall labor market, with only the Construction sector boasting a higher share of pay transparent job postings than the overall national average. But while still lagging behind, pay transparency in the broader B2B vertical grew between September 2023 and September 2024 in all categories except Construction. 

For more labor market insights from the Indeed Hiring Lab, visit us at hiringlab.org.