2023 brought with it uncertainty on the talent front. Fears of a recession led some companies to pause hiring and others, notably in Big Tech, to undertake massive layoffs.

But that unease likely won’t carry into the new year, hiring experts said.

Employers were nervous about a recession and “waiting for the other shoe to drop” in 2023, according to Bill Armstrong, president of recruiting at Safeguard Global, a professional staffing and consulting firm. But now those fears are waning, he said.

“I think people put a hold on some of those hiring budgets in 2023, but now they’ve got the money in Q1. I think we’re going to see a little bit of an uptick in Q1, because there is a little pent-up demand there,” Armstrong said.

Typically, when the tech industry has layoffs, other industries follow, Armstrong said. But that wasn’t the case in 2023, with companies holding onto workers they had struggled to hire after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Everybody else took a wait and see approach. You got this market that sort of stagnated a little bit, but you never saw that huge spike in the unemployment rate. You still saw a lot of job creation, and I think that’s because people were so burned during the pandemic,” Armstrong said.

‍

Read full article here