What Trump’s election victory means for job seekers

• Donald Trump’s win is reducing uncertainty, boosting some employers’ confidence about posting jobs.
• Hiring experts anticipate a “Trump bump” despite concerns about tariffs and immigration.
• Some employers had been waiting to post jobs until the outcome of the election was clear.

If you’ve been looking for a job and haven’t had any luck, that could be about to change.

Donald Trump’s decisive win ends some uncertainty about the broad direction of the US — and extinguishes worries about a drawn-out fight over the outcome.

Executives focused on hiring told Business Insider that the newfound clarity was already making some employers more willing to post jobs.

“Our phone was basically ringing off the hook with companies looking to hire,” said Lief Larson, the CEO of Salesfolks, a staffing firm focused on sales roles. “Regardless of your political persuasion, there is no doubt that the market is anticipating a Trump bump.”

Employment experts told BI that knowing who will occupy the White House helps employers, even as questions remain about the fallout from an increase in tariffs or a reduction in immigration.

“Having the uncertainty behind us will prompt many — and encourage many — to start looking at increasing hiring,” said Tim Glowa, the founder and CEO of HRbrain, which develops artificial-intelligence tools for human resources.

Demand in tech

It also helps that some employers push to bring on people in the fourth quarter before the end of the year. Others prepare job descriptions to go up in January, said Michelle Volberg, a longtime recruiter who founded Twill, a venture-backed startup that pays tech workers to recommend peers for key jobs.

“We’re seeing a pretty healthy number of roles planning to be posted in January, probably more than we even expected,” Volberg said, adding that she’d seen an “upward trend” in the past year.

“I don’t see anything currently on the horizon that will challenge the US economy in any way,” Volberg said.

She said some of the demand was in tech, particularly from companies focused on AI looking to hire in engineering, product, sales, and marketing.

That’s welcome news because while the overall US unemployment rate remains low, some tech firms have been cutting some roles and slow to hire in other areas — much to job seekers’ frustration.

Kathleen Lin Hurtubise, the CEO and founder of Aloha Hospitality Professionals, a staffing firm focused on hospitality and light industrial workers, said that uncertainty about tax and immigration policies had led some of the company’s customers to wait out the politics.

“We had a handful of clients who put us on pause until the elections,” she said. Many employers, Hurtubise added, wanted to know how their business decisions would most likely play out once it became clear who would take the White House.

More employers could turn to automation

Jason Leverant, the chief operating officer and president of AtWork Group, a staffing firm focused on areas including advanced manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing, said that a focus on bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US — so-called reshoring efforts that are underway — could help boost momentum in hiring workers without college degrees.

But Leverant said reshoring could also be expensive for employers and, when combined with talent shortages, could push more companies to automate where possible.

He said that reduced immigration could also harm industries like construction and agriculture where immigrants often fill many roles.

“Do we start seeing a skills gap or a talent gap there?” Leverant said, adding that such a chasm could eventually push wages higher in those areas if employers grow desperate for workers.

Leverant said a focus of some in Trump’s inner circle, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, on areas like workplace automation could mean that as some aspects of jobs go away, workers who get the right training could take on “more complex roles that even advanced robotics can’t touch right now.”

A postelection rush to hire

Aaron Cleavinger, a managing partner at Murdoch Mason Executive Search Group, said he’d been “inundated” with new search requests from clients since the election.

He said that most likely reflected a mix of the typical end-of-year ramp-up and several months’ worth of demand from employers, particularly in areas like manufacturing, that held off on posting jobs because of political uncertainty.

“Anything that they’ve been delaying for the last couple of months, they’re finally releasing,” Cleavinger said, referring to employers and job postings.

Cleavinger said many employers might have been agnostic about who would win and just wanted to know the outcome.

“They say, ‘Hey, just tell me what I can count on, and then I can build a plan around that,'” he said.

Cleavinger said that while demand for hiring would vary by industry, as it often does, optimism about tax cuts could help boost small and midsize businesses’ hiring budgets.

Obstacles could emerge

Even as some employers look to increase hiring, getting a job — and keeping it — might get harder for some workers. Peter Rahbar, an employment attorney who founded the boutique law firm the Rahbar Group, said he expected to see an erosion of protections afforded to federal workers, including those seeking jobs.

Deprioritized enforcement of antidiscrimination laws could make it harder for some people, including women and minorities, to land and retain jobs, he said.

Rahbar added that lower immigration could hurt industries including tech, as some tech companies rely on skilled immigrants to fill some roles.

For now, though, Cleavinger, from Murdoch Mason Executive Search Group, expects that demand for workers will generally heat up.

“I expect a pretty significant uptick in hiring,” Cleavinger said. “We usually see that anyway at the end of the year, but I think it’ll be a little more pronounced now.”