📈 America's entrepreneurial bug

👋 Happy Thursday! First order of business: Are you registered for our free webinar next week celebrating female founders in the talent acquisition space? Yes? Great! No? Keep reading so you don’t miss out on the fun.

In honor of Women’s History Month, we're hosting a webinar featuring insights from leading female founders and C-suite executives revolutionizing talent acquisition and recruitment technology. Speakers include Mona Tawakali, CSO at Recruitics, Summer Delaney, MBA, CEO & Founder at CollabWORK, Milena Berry, CEO & Co-Founder at PowerToFly, and Katie Fortunato, President & Co-Founder at RecruitmentMarketing.com. Check out more details here and secure your spot today for free.

Have questions, comments, or any other thoughts? Please reach out to us. We’d love to chat.

— Team RecruitmentMarketing.com ✨

Today’s edition is a 5-minute read. Here’s what to expect👇

🗞️ New business apps are booming
💰️ Goldman faces issues with female talent
📋 ZocDoc, Twilio hiring for TA roles
💻 Layoffs at Unilever, Walgreens

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Applications for new businesses have soared across U.S. states and counties since 2021, making a notable impact on both the economy and job market, according to a new report this week from the Center for American Progress.

Entrepreneurship pre-pandemic = 🐌 
If you can remember anything about your life before the pandemic, you may recall how economists in 2019 were worried over some troubling signs in the markets, including the sluggish pace of new business startups, which hinted at a possible slowdown. But as we know all too well, the impact of COVID-19 flipped everything on its head.

Entrepreneurship post-pandemic = 💥 
Data since 2021 suggests we’re in the midst of a startup boom, the Center for America Progress found. For one, entrepreneurs filed 5.2 million “likely employer” business applications between January 2021 and December 2023, slightly more than a one-third increase compared with the number of applications filed between 2017 and 2019. The analysis also showed that the number of business establishments grew in more than 8 in 10 counties nationwide between 2019 and 2023. The kicker? These trends are showing no signs of slowing down, even three years after the first COVID-19 vaccines were administered.

The she-conomy is 🚀 
Another report from CNN found that more and more women are stepping into entrepreneurship. Data from Yelp demonstrated a 17% jump in new businesses run by women, with over 58,000 startups added to their platform compared to the previous year. And according to payroll service Gusto, in 2023, 49% of new business owners were women, outnumbering men at 45%. This is quite the change from 2019, when only 29% of new business owners were women.

One particular U.S. state is also 🚀 
Interestingly, new business growth was especially fast in Georgia counties, which claimed four out of the top ten spots in a list ranking large countries with the fastest business establishment growth between 2019 and 2023. Go Dawgs!

New businesses = new jobs?
You would think so, but we’d say TBD. Historically, a 1% increase in these likely employer business applications within a state leads to a 1% increase in new businesses employing workers within two years, according to Brookings. But at the same time, a report last week from TechCrunch details how startups have been hiring fewer workers and paying out less in equity compensation.

📥️ Read more from the Center for American Progress

NUMBERS

Numbers That’ll Make You Think

• 77.8% — The labor participation rate for women between 25 and 54, an all-time high (Forbes)

• 8 — The fewer number of hours you may be working per week after Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday introduced a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the U.S. (The Hill)

• $3.2 million — The amount paid out in a settlement to a former Tesla factory worker after he presented evidence that he had been subject to repeated harassment by supervisors (NYT)

• 25% — The percentage of college seniors who have accepted full-time jobs and are not longer looking for work as of February, compared to 33% in 2023 (WSJ)

• 3,800 — The number of job vacancies in state prisons across New York, a record high, according to a new report detailing the system’s corrections officer recruitment woes (NCPR)

• $256,992 — The court-ordered amount that two New Jersey-based employment staffing firms and their owners owed to 238 current and former employees for not paying overtime (SIA)

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INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

M&A Deals, Industry Moves, & What You Should Read About This Week

• Nearly a week after an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal on how Goldman Sachs hadn’t delivered on its pledge to bring more women into senior ranks, Stephanie Cohen, one of the most senior women at the firm, announced she is leaving for a role at tech company Cloudfare (WSJ)

• Swedish private equity firm EQT Partners is rumored to have put up its hand to acquire Melbourne-based human resources software business PageUp (Financial Review)

• Recruiter.com appointed Granger Whitelaw as its new CEO and president (Yahoo Finance)

• A new report details how Hollywood contraction is hitting entertainment executive jobs (Deadline)

• A few weeks after mass layoffs hit Sports Illustrated, the outlet has found a new home at Minute Media (The Hollywood Reporter)

• Middle managers have accounted for almost a third of layoffs last year, a new report shows (Business Insider)

OPEN ROLES VIA TALENTCONNECT

Jobs You Might Want (For Yourself!)

• Telecommunications company Motorola Solutions is hiring an HR Business Partner in Allen, TX

• Financial services company Northwestern Mutual is hiring a Recruiter in Stamford, CT

• Venture capital and private equity firm Dragonfly is hiring a Recruiter in San Francisco, CA

• Healthcare platform Zocdoc is hiring a Recruiting Coordinator in New York, NY

• Software company Twilio is hiring a Senior Program Manager, Talent Acquisition based remote

• Retail company PacSun is hiring a Sr. Director, Human Resources in Anaheim, CA

  
  For a full list of open talent acquisition roles, check out TalentConnect, a job board for TA-lent, powered by RecruitmentMarketing.com

LAYOFFS

Places For You To Source Fresh Talent

• Subscription investing app Stash, last valued at $1.4 billion, is laying off about 25% of its workforce (Axios)

• Augmented writing startup Textio said it is laying off 14 employees, or 16% of staff (GeekWire)

• Drugstore company Walgreens plans to close one of its distribution centers in Orlando and lay off the facility's 324 employees (Orlando Weekly)

• Consumer goods giant Unilever said it would cut 7,500 jobs and spin off its ice cream unit Ben & Jerry’s to reduce costs and simplify its portfolio of brands (NYT)

• Singapore-based rewards and shopping platform ShopBack is eliminating 195 roles, or 24% of its staff, its CEO announced on Tuesday (Bloomberg)

WEEKLY TRIVIA

Test Your TA Knowledge

 👋 Thanks for reading!