Tech sector job postings on Indeed (mostly) stabilized this year
Summary
This Marketplace Tech episode interviews Corey Staley of Indeed about why U.S. tech job postings stabilized in 2025 but remained far below their February 2020 baseline. Staley says the Tech Job Posting Index sits at 67.2, roughly 33% below the pre-pandemic benchmark, while health care is about 23% above its own baseline. The episode separates AI market enthusiasm from broad labor demand: AI, machine-learning, and data-engineering roles are stronger, but AI-related skills appear in only about 4% of Indeed postings and have not revived overall tech hiring.
Key Claims
- Tech hiring surged after the pandemic, then began falling quickly around mid-2022.
- Tech job postings have stopped falling dramatically, but the new stability is a low-level Tech Hiring Stabilization rather than a return to boom conditions.
- Indeed uses February 2020 as a baseline of 100; the episode reports a tech posting index of 67.2, about 33% below that baseline.
- Health care is described as roughly 23% above its pre-pandemic baseline, highlighting a sector mismatch for workers trained into software roles.
- AI demand is real but concentrated: only about 4% of Indeed postings ask for AI or AI-related skills.
- Software Developer Hiring Pullback is the largest weak spot named in the episode, with IT support and networking also down significantly.
- Students who entered software training in 2020 or 2021 face a different market at graduation, and shifting from software into health care roles such as nursing is not simple.
- Data Engineering Demand is a stronger submarket because AI systems require data cleaning, data processing, model preparation, fine-tuning, and implementation work.
- AI may affect developer demand because coding tasks are exposed to automation, but Staley also points to pandemic-era overhiring and a Low-Fire Labor Market as non-AI causes.
- Employers use AI language unevenly: about half of AI-mentioning postings are described as building or applying AI, about 15% use AI in recruiting context, and some use it as a buzzword.
- The 2026 outlook is stabilization and selective growth in AI/data roles, not a broad employment boom.
Key Quotes
“67.2” - Indeed’s reported tech posting index level against a February 2020 baseline.
“low fire” - Staley’s labor-market label for employers retaining existing workers while new hiring remains weak.
“not an employment explosion” - the source’s 2026 outlook for tech hiring.
Connections
- Marketplace Tech and Megan McCarty-Corino - show and host context for the labor-market interview.
- Corey Staley and Indeed - guest and institutional source for the job-posting data.
- Tech Job Posting Index and Tech Hiring Stabilization - core measurement and interpretation added by the episode.
- AI Labor Market Concentration - explains why AI stock enthusiasm and AI-role growth do not imply broad tech hiring recovery.
- Software Developer Hiring Pullback, Data Engineering Demand, and Low-Fire Labor Market - main labor-market concepts sharpened by the source.
- AI Hiring Arms Race - adjacent hiring concept; this episode focuses on employer demand and job descriptions rather than application-volume overload.
- AI Assisted Software Development Risk - adjacent software-work concept; the episode says AI may affect developer demand but does not reduce the pullback to AI alone.
Contradictions
- No direct contradiction found with existing wiki content.
- The source qualifies AI-boom narratives by showing that AI investment, AI stock-market enthusiasm, and AI-specific job growth can coexist with weak overall tech postings.
- The source also qualifies simple “AI replaced developers” narratives: software roles are AI-exposed, but the episode also points to pandemic overhiring and a low-fire labor market.