🔑 Confidence is key

👋 Happy Thursday! Have you gotten your tickets? The Powerball jackpot has soared past $1.23 billion, ballooning to the fourth-largest prize in the game’s history. 💰️ 

But don’t start billionaire daydreaming just yet … a this week report from the New York Times explains that thanks to the magic of rising interest rates, advertised lottery numbers have swelled, while the real value of the current lottery prizes isn’t even half that much (even before taxes are taken into account).

“It’s like bragging that you’ve got a $1 million job, when, actually, you’re paid $1,000 a week and expect to keep working for the next 20 years.” Way to ruin all the fun, NYT. We’ll still be playing our luck! 🍀 

— Team RecruitmentMarketing.com ✨

Today’s edition is 1,156 words. Here’s what to expect👇

🗞️ Employee confidence shows modest gains
💰️ CA fast food workers get pay bump
📋 Employ names new CEO
💻 Amazon, Osso VR cut roles

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This week, Glassdoor released its monthly Employee Confidence Index report, showing a modest uptick in employee confidence following a record low in February.

Employee confidence … what’s that?
It’s really just a measure of how employees are feeling in their roles and at their companies. This includes the level of trust, belief, and assurance that employees have in their organization, its leadership, and their own abilities to perform their job effectively. An employee vibe check, if you will.

Data details, please.
The share of employees reporting a positive 6-month business outlook rose to 46.1% in March 2024, up from 45.2% in February but still down from 51% in March 2023. The year-over-year decrease was primarily driven by concerns about job security and employer growth prospects, according to the report.

Layoff chatter is killing the vibe.
While layoff headlines have faded since the start of the year, water cooler chatter about them has not. The report found that the share of Glassdoor reviews that mention layoffs increased month-over-month in March and are up 28% year-over-year. “Economic anxiety about job security does not necessarily match actual layoffs one-to-one and the impacts on morale and employee sentiment may last longer than employers realize,” the report said.

Confidence by industry.
Any guesses on the “most confident” industry this month? Hint: Look in the mirror. It’s human resources and staffing, with a confidence index of 64.4% in March. Trailing in second is construction (60.9%), followed by aerospace and defense (60.1%). The lowest? Government and public administration (45.4%). It’s not all bad news for this industry, though. While confidence is low, this sector experiences minimal changes in confidence levels from year to year, thanks to its resilience to economic fluctuations.

Confidence by seniority.
You may want to give your analyst a hug today: Entry-level workers reported their lowest confidence levels since Glassdoor’s data began in 2016. The report cites that a slowdown in hiring may be crimping opportunities for new grads to enter the workforce, while lower quit rates also mean entry-level workers have found it difficult to climb the career ladder. Luckily, according to a report from The Conference Board, most CHROs said keeping their current employees and improving employee experience will be a top focus in 2024.

📥️ Read more from Glassdoor Economic Research

NUMBERS

Numbers That’ll Make You Think

• 500,000 — The number of fast food workers in California who will get a pay bump to $20 per hour, thanks to a new law that went into effect on April 1 (NPR)

• 140,000 — The number of jobs potentially impacted by last week’s bridge collapse in Baltimore, according to recent records from the port (WMAR Baltimore)

• $184.6 billion — The projected revenue of the staffing industry for this year, down 3% from 2023 (SIA)

• #132 — The worldwide ranking by net worth of PeopleSoft and Workday cofounder David Duffield on this year’s Forbes billionaire list, released on Tuesday (Forbes)

• 29.2% — The pay bump percentage U.S. workers who swapped from fully remote to fully in-office received in 2023, nearly double that of those who moved the other way (CNBC)

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

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

• Talent giant Employ, parent company of JazzHR, Lever, and Jobvite, announced the appointment of Steve Cox as its new CEO (HR Tech Feed)

• Gen Z focused jobs site Home From College raised $5.4 million in seed funding (Axios)

• Job site Indeed announced the launch of Smart Sourcing—an AI-powered suite of products designed to streamline the hiring process for employers and job seekers (RecruitmentMarketing.com)

• Japan’s $75B parent of Indeed and Glassdoor, Recruit Holdings, is led by a man who wants to be “the most powerless CEO in the world,” according to a new Fortune profile (Fortune)

• Skills development platform Modal announced a $25 million Series A funding round (TechCrunch)

• Staffing provider Dexian appointed finance veteran Chris Conover as chief financial officer and promoted Tara Winn to chief operating officer (SIA)

• February’s job report released this week shows the U.S. labor market remains “quite healthy” (Yahoo Finance)

A MESSAGE FROM PUBLIC INSIGHT

Talent Intelligence – Turn Insights Into Income

Talent market intelligence is a strategic tool to help solution providers increase income by identifying prospects, preparing sales pitches, expanding product/service offerings, and creating high-value content. Targeted insights on job postings, time-to-fill, supply/demand, ad indicators, comp and employer reputation plus local and industry competitive benchmarks uncover employer opportunities and challenges.

➡️ Learn more from Public Insight

OPEN ROLES VIA TALENTCONNECT

Jobs You Might Want (For Yourself!)

• Asset manager Blackstone is hiring a Talent Development Partner based in New York, NY

• Hospitality company Omni Hotels & Resorts is hiring a Recruiting Coordinator based in Dallas, TX

• Pharmaceutical company ReviveRX is hiring a Recruiting Coordinator based in Houston, TX

• Car manufacturer Ford Motors is hiring a Director of Campus Recruiting based remote

• Life insurance company Genworth Financial is looking for a Talent Acquisition Manager based in Raleigh, NC

  
  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

• Tech giant Amazon is laying off hundreds of employees in its cloud computing unit, the company said on Wednesday (CNBC)

• Software company Lightspeed Commerce is cutting about 280 jobs less than two months after its founder returned to the CEO role (MarketWatch)

• Virtual reality surgical training platform Osso VR will lay off 67 people at its corporate headquarters in San Francisco, the company said in a regulatory filing Thursday (MedTechDive)

• The University of Texas at Austin is laying off dozens of employees who work in DEI roles in response to a state law that banned such programs (Washington Post)

WEEKLY TRIVIA

Test Your TA Knowledge

 👋 Thanks for reading!