Happy Jobs Friday. This week, we’re peeking behind the steel curtain as U.S. Steel’s job openings paint a rosier picture than the company’s CEO re: maintaining American ownership. Read to the end for the latest labor demand trends at four companies with earnings calls next week
This Week in Jobs Data:
U.S. Steel, Constellation Brands, NOKIA
Happy Jobs Friday.
This week, we’re peeking behind the steel curtain as U.S. Steel’s job openings paint a rosier picture than the company’s CEO re: maintaining American ownership.
Plus: job openings plunge for key DEI roles across the workforce, Frontier Communications is on the sales warpath ahead of possible acquisition, and Nokia should probably consider that reported sale they’ve been denying.
Read to the end for the latest labor demand trends at four companies with earnings calls next week: Adobe, Signet Jewelers, Academy Sports, and Oxford Industries.
CEO David Burritt has cast the pending sale of U.S. Steel as existential, claiming he “doesn’t have the money” to protect thousands of jobs at the Pittsburgh blast furnace without investment from proposed Japanese buyer, Nippon Steel. Pro-labor President Biden seems likely to block the deal when it hits his desk, a move in line with the United Steelworkers Union and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who’s called Burritt’s threat of job cuts a bluff.
However much weight one puts on executive incentives to carry out the $15 billion deal, it’s worth noting that labor demand at the legacy steel manufacturer is the highest it’s been since 2019. Job openings in production, in particular, have spiked 300% from January of 2020. In any case, the picture isn’t one of a company in immediate dire straits and begs the question: is Japanese investment really the only way forward for America’s second largest steel producer?
U.S. Steel Job Openings by Occupation since 1/1/2020
Beer giant Molson Coors is the latest in a parade of large companies to scale back on diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring initiatives that became a rallying cry across the job market in 2020. The Supreme Court’s rebuke of affirmative action last summer seems to have given many companies—particularly those with right-leaning customer bases—their cue to downsize DEI plans.
LinkUp data on Compass shows a 40% decrease in active job openings with “diversity” and/or “inclusion” in the job title since the start of 2022. At the same time, the average salary for these jobs has plunged from over $80K to just over $60K.
The job description search tool on Compass is a powerful way to evaluate hiring trends at individual companies, within specific industries, and in the case of national DEI hiring, across the job market writ large.
Job openings for DEI roles down ~40% across job market since January 2022
Bloomberg reported this week that Verizon is in talks to buy rival telecom provider, Frontier Communications, one of the largest purveyors of fiber optic internet in the U.S. LinkUp data shows a massive surge in sales hiring in the last year, likely in response to activist investor Jana Partner’s pressure to improve returns.
Expansion in sales hiring at such a rapid clip is often a signal of a company’s intent to sell or go public, as they hustle to beef up revenue ahead of investor due diligence.
Frontier Comms Job Openings for Sales Roles up 20x YoY
The beer and wine producer reports slowing sales as macroeconomic factors like rising unemployment hurt demand. Active job openings have fallen over 60% since a year long high in October of last year. The drop in demand is especially pronounced in production jobs (yellow in graph), indicating significant projected slowdown from the maker of Corona and Modelo.
Constellation Brands Production Job Openings down 10x YoY
Reports this week indicate that Nokia has been approached to sell mobile network assets, possibly to Samsung. Meanwhile the Finnish telecom denies the reports, adding that the company is “well-positioned to service its customers, invest in the portfolio and create value for shareholders.”
LinkUp data on Nokia shows a steady downtrend in monthly active job openings, with an 80% overall decline since January of 2023. This signals to us that the company is, in fact, struggling to match the aggressive growth of competitors and would perhaps do well to follow through on a sale.
Nokia Active Monthly Job Openings down 80% since 1/1/23
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.
