If you haven’t been following the news about the American labor market, you might just want to continue being blissfully ignorant.
That’s because, to put it lightly, the news isn’t great. Hiring is the lowest it has been since 2009, and even seasonal holiday work, once a staple of the labor market, is slowly vanishing.
This has manifested in a lot of ways. Highly credentialed people find themselves unable to get hired, and workers find themselves making more money by working in hospitality than they do sitting in an office.
However, if you think that things are bad right now, they may be about to get worse. Why do some believe this is the case? One user on TikTok says there’s a key indicator that people are ignoring.
What’s Going On With These Specific Layoffs?
In a video with over 725,000 views, TikTok user Bri (@bri.erinn) says one group of workers has been hit particularly hard by layoffs. According to her, it’s a canary in the coalmine of the entire economy.
“They are laying off the recruiters,” she starts. “And if you’re not a recruiter like me, and you’re not living and breathing on LinkedIn, you’re probably not seeing this. But the majority of people that I’m seeing recently laid off are the recruiters.”
According to Bri, this means that companies are not hiring. While they may say this is due to the rise of Artificial Intelligence, Bri insists that this isn’t the case.
“We are not there yet, not collectively,” she says of AI. “We still need recruiters, and they’re being laid off in massive numbers. And I have not seen this since 2008 when things were really bad.”
She closes by saying that the firing of recruiters is “a very bad sign.”
Is It True That More Recruiters Are Being Fired?
Most of the evidence for this claim is anecdotal, though that does not mean it is necessarily incorrect.
Presently, much of the data focuses on raw “hiring and firing” numbers. These numbers are not broken down into specific professions. It’s entirely plausible that people in recruiting roles are being fired at a higher rate than people in other positions.
The evidence that does exist shows that jobs in the professional services and information sectors, which tend to be indicative of the status of many white-collar careers, lost jobs over the past few months.
Additionally, firms analyzing current hiring practices say there’s a trend toward right-skilling, retraining, and redeployment of present employees instead of hiring new workers.
Finally, it should be noted that the recruiting field has had several panics like this in recent memory. A post with over 180 comments on the Recruiting subreddit from about a year ago questioned whether recruiting as a job was “dying out.” Another post, this one from two years ago, also discussed the perceived rise in recruiters being laid off.
In summary, it’s possible that recruiters are being laid off in higher numbers than in other fields. That said, it’s not a surefire determinant of the current state of the economy.
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Commenters Are Worried
In the comments section, users noted that they didn’t feel too great about how the country is doing economically.
“Former recruiter here and was laid off last time in 2008. This is not a drill. Truth,” declared a user.
“I feel like 2008 was easier. There was hope and no ai. What’s the point of any future now? Is there one?” asked another.
“Forget not hiring, my husbands company is about to do a massive layoff in 3 weeks,” shared a third. “It has nothing to do with AI. They are firing to just try to survive right now. He’s been in meetings for weeks restructuring and slating people for release.”
BroBible reached out to Bri via email.