We’re teeing up this week’s job market analysis: Callaway’s Topgolf spinoff, Lactalis’s hiring surge, Apple’s chip talent, and more. Also, get “before the earnings” indicators for General Mills, Factset, Steelcase, and Scholastic.
This week, we’re teeing up analysis of Callaway’s Topgolf spinoff—and its preceding job openings slash & burn recorded in our data.
Plus: Lactalis charts a textbook hiring pattern ahead of its big yogurt acquisition, CEOs put a pin in sustainability, Apple’s making hires who make chips, and no one’s salivating more for rate cuts than Affirm.
Read to the end for the latest labor demand trends at four companies with earnings calls next week: General Mills, Factset, Steelcase, and Scholastic.
The recreational driving range operator has been hit hard by a slowdown in consumer spending and corporate events as orgs tighten their belts and opt for Zoom trivia.
Callaway announced the Topgolf acquisition in 2020 with hopes of converting non-committal players into serious golfers kitted out with Callaway clubs. The strategy hasn't panned out; the company announced earlier this month plans to unwind the businesses after four consecutive quarters of revenue decline at the driving ranges.
In the Compass Subsidiary Tracker chart below you'll see this decision reflected in hiring activity months ahead of the announcement. Topgolf removed 852 job openings from its hiring portal on March 24th and has kept the brakes on since. Meanwhile, job openings at Callaway Brands have held steady as ~real~ golfers continue to hit the links in stride.
It's a primo example of distress signal in labor demand data when a company freezes new hires so abruptly—in this case to assess the future of a failing asset.
Topgolf hiring down 90% six months ahead of spin-off
Privately held French dairy company Lactalis will acquire General Mills’ U.S. yogurt business in a deal valued at $2.1billion. How to prepare for all that extra milk? Job openings at Lactalis show clear patterns of acquisition prep in the months ahead of the Gen Mills announcement. In July, the year’s first listings for lawyers cropped up, followed by a 60% increase in production hires, software engineers, and graphic designers. It’s exactly the composition of professionals you’d need to incorporate new brands into your business—and jobs data shows the plans at work well in advance of official notice.
Lactalis production job openings spike in advance of yogurt acquisition
Even though 60% of consumers are more concerned about climate change than ever before, Bain & Co. reported this week a trend of environmental apathy among chief executives. With AI, inflation, geopolitical chaos, and a presidential race pounding everybody’s drums, many business strategies to cut down on carbon have been tabled. Our data bears this trend out: a description search of millions of job listings shows a drop from 627 job openings for Sustainability Managers in September 2022 to just 329 today.
Sustainability Manager job openings down 47% in two years
In AI, as in Poker, the silver cup goes to the cat holding the most chips. Apple has taken up the mantle of fabricating silicon chips of its own to power AI products, braving the infamous moat dredged by Nvidia and its uber-GPUs. Since January 2023, job openings at Apple for roles requiring experience with semiconductor chips have increased by 46%.
Apple Job Titles up 46% for Semiconductor Chip Roles
Buy-now-pay-later lenders have struggled in the last two years as high interest rates drove up funding costs. With a Fed rate cut this month more than likely, Affirm and its competitors expect significant user inflow as more borrowers are approved and fewer turned off by high rates. Judged by its job openings data, Affirm looks ready to absorb the shock of scale: since July, the company has steadily beefed up roles for managers and finance pros.
Affirm job openings tick up in Management and Finance
Minority stakeholder AJ Investments called for the French video game studio to go private and install a new management team amid accumulating setbacks. The shot sent UbiSoft stock spelunking, as shareholders view recent delays of two major product launches with sharpened concern.
In July the company claimed developers needed extra time to meet players' expectations.
Our data shows part of the problem is likely rooted in the company's hiring strategy: all job openings are down over 40% from September of last year. And apropos of dodgy time management, listings for jobs requiring the skill of project management are down nearly 60% in the same period.
Job Openings at UbiSoft down 40% YoY
Before the Earnings Call:
LinkUp is highlighting recent hiring trends at four companies set to report earnings next week. The data below is meant to provide additional insight ahead of official reports, and not to stand alone as an indicator of earnings results.
Every day, LinkUp indexes millions of job listings directly from more than 67,000 employer websites. In aggregate, this data tells the story of company health over time, strategic approaches to growth, signals of distress, and in-demand skills.
