Can Your LinkedIn Inbox Predict the Job Market?

Hi there! Recently I noticed that I was receiving more LinkedIn messages than usual. Have you also been receiving more messages from recruiters on LinkedIn recently, or is it just me? Is the tech job market heating up again? To answer this question, I tracked every recruiter message since 2020. Here's the number of messages I received each month.

I started working in September 2019, so this dataset covers my career from 5 months of experience to more than 6 years. In total, it contains 544 recruiter messages over 6 years. A few things stand out. There is a peak around mid-2022, which matches the hiring boom across the tech industry, followed by the crash in 2023. In the last month we also observe an uptick in the number of messages compared with the previous months. Can the number of LinkedIn messages be used as a proxy for the market? Let's look at the software development job postings data.

The similarities are pretty remarkable. The trends in LinkedIn messages look very similar to the trends in job postings. Let's overlay the charts.

The peak in the number of LinkedIn messages appears a few months after the peak in job postings, which makes sense, since companies first open roles, and only later start actively reaching out. The most recent peak is also more noticeable in the LinkedIn messages than in the market data, but the upward trend is still visible for most markets. At least in my case, the LinkedIn inbox can be a surprisingly good indicator of the software job market. While this is just a single data point and depends on factors like experience, location, and tech stack, the correlation with broader job postings data is hard to ignore. The next time you are looking for a new job, it might be a good idea to check your LinkedIn inbox to understand if it's a good time to apply or if it might be worth waiting a bit for the market to improve. Thanks for reading!