Chris Villanueva 00:44
My name is Chris Villanueva I founded Let’s Eat, Grandma resume service. If you are looking to boost your resume LinkedIn profile, anything needed in your job search, head on over to letseatgrandma.com and check out our stuff. Alright, so it’s a strange job market right now because we’ve seen four years of really secure jobs for the people that have them.

Chris Villanueva 01:05
The layoff rates have been at low’s in general, although we saw a lot of this come up in 2023, it was very scary, but things are rather stable given everything that’s going on. But the issue right now is it’s a little bit harder. Maybe a little bit is an understatement there or a lot, but it’s harder for people to find a job for those who were either quitting or people who don’t have jobs right now.

Chris Villanueva 01:29
January was interesting, so looking at the most recent data that was published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we saw that non-farm payroll, this is most of you guys that rose by 143,000 in January. We expected that to be 175,000. I saw professional and business services took a little bit of a hit versus last year in which it reported some serious growth. However, the interesting thing worth noting is that the numbers for December and November were revised up.

Chris Villanueva 02:04
This was higher than expected. This was December, revising upward of 51,000 in November was revised up 49,000. So November hitting at 261 K and December revising upward to 307,000 job editions here. So this is pretty crazy in my opinion because you would expect January to see a much higher surge as we normally do. However, November and December took that, and this basically goes along with what I have been saying the entire time ever since 2018 and that just because it’s a particular time of year, maybe it’s the holiday period and you want to apply for jobs or maybe it’s January, still apply to jobs with the same consistency that you would have otherwise because if you don’t, then you might miss out on some good opportunities here.

Chris Villanueva 02:57 
You really don’t know what a month is going to look like in the future. You don’t have a crystal ball. So if you need a job, don’t wait to apply for that job. Keep consistently doing it and it will work out. I know that my wife was applying for jobs around the same time and she even noted like, oh my gosh, I’m having a harder time and she’s married to me. I mean resume writer dude, and she still had a harder time. However, the lead that eventually turned into an offer picked her up in December and that’s when she reached out. That’s when she got the offer and she started back in January.

Chris Villanueva 03:32
So again, I know we’re in January, February, March Q1 right now, but the principles hold the same. Continue to apply for jobs, don’t look at what’s going on in the news, what you think it’s going to be in the future, apply for that job now with the same tenacity I believe in you.

Chris Villanueva 03:50
So in January of 2024, there were some differences compared to this year and what we saw. When you look at January, 2024, the number of job editions is currently set to 119,000. So currently lower than what we saw this past month, but when that report originally came out, it reported 353,000 job editions. So I don’t know what the heck, how the heck these numbers are tabulated, but that is a massive difference. And so that was a common theme from January all the way up until the end of last year in which there were numbers getting revised down and there were much less jobs being added than we originally thought.

Chris Villanueva 04:31
So that is really interesting. There even are, in my opinion, it’s going to cause a lot of confusion. You can even type in job search editions, confusion, and I just think that it’s a really messy and complicated time right now, non-farm payroll gains were lower than suggested. So according to SHRM, this average pales in comparison to the overheated conditions that characterized much of the pandemic era, but it is still quite healthy by historical standards. And I agree this is a healthy time. There is no so-called crash. The economy looks healthy, it looks okay, but there is just something going on with the job market right now and we can certainly feel that when we contrast it to 2022.

Chris Villanueva 05:15
Now layoffs and this is another healthy indicator of how things are going. Layoffs continue to remain low, but so does the job switching. So there’s been a notable decrease in people changing jobs maybe because they’re afraid of layoffs or because of how we feel like the job market is right now. So in 20 24, 30 9 million individuals quit their positions, 39.6 million, I should say marking an 11% drop from 2023 and at 22% decrease from its peak in 2022.

Chris Villanueva 05:46
So this suggests a stabilization in the labor market. I know it’s really rough when we compare to what happened a few years ago, but things are looking stable, although fewer workers are seeking opportunities. This comes from empower.com. In January, 2025, we saw that average hourly earnings grew 4.1%. So there was a two year decline again from that era of the great resignation and we saw hourly earnings begin to increase since the second half of 2024. So this again looks promising. I think in my opinion, things are okay, not a bad start, this is a modest pace compared to past years and we were disappointed by January. But I think that things are going to be okay and again, keep applying for those jobs because you eventually are going to get something, especially if you’re listening to this podcast.

Chris Villanueva 06:40
Alright, so let’s look at some different industries and compare where there were some significant gains and where some industries may have struggled recently. So healthcare and social assistance. Of course, these are stable industries and this one almost doubled second place. So we saw 66,000 jobs added. That was a big growth when you compare it to the other ones, retail trade was in second place followed by government positions. The biggest losers unfortunately were mining followed by food services and then administrative and support services saw the biggest loss.

Chris Villanueva 07:18 
So no matter where you are, whatever type of position you’re applying for, maybe it’s time for a pivot, maybe it’s not time. Maybe you want to continue forging the path forward within your industry because you’re passionate about it, but it might be worth exploring if you are seeing like you’re not getting success by applying for a particular job in a particular industry and looking to open up your sites for other industries. Again, these are just soft recommendations. I’m just reporting the data and giving you what might be helpful.

Chris Villanueva 07:48 
Alright, we also saw the concept of DEI is currently being redefined. Obviously we have a completely new administration in office right now. This is not a political office, sorry, not a political podcast. I am not standing here trying to preach, preach one sort of agenda. I’ve always been rather moderate in my views and gone all around the spectrum. In fact, I make friends with all sorts of political ideologues out there. I’m just basically trying to report what I see. But according to recent news reports, companies are following the federal government’s lead to pull back on diversity equity inclusion initiatives.

Chris Villanueva 08:29
These are companies like PBS and also Goldman Sachs as well. There were certain initiatives that I think became really strong during the Biden administration and they are clearly companies that are going to be pulling back because the Trump administration is intentionally trying to cut back on those.

Chris Villanueva 08:48
Again, I’m not trying to push anything in particular, I’m reporting what I see, but if you are a job seeker within DEI, there’s two different things you can do. Now, obviously, number one, you can continue pursuing the same sort of positions and continuing to grow in whatever you’ve been doing. I know we’ve had some customers who have been applying for those types of positions. Or the other thing you can do is still lead for with your mission and what you’re trying to do within the realm of diversity here, but pivot to other roles. Some other examples here might be HR or people operations roles, things like talent acquisition, hr, business partner, employee experience manager. Maybe you will apply within learning and development.

Chris Villanueva 09:30
There are other, I should say, heart minded positions for lack of a better phrase there that might suit you as well. Things such as corporate social responsibility manager, ESG specialist, or maybe even applying within compliance ethics and risk management for EEO compliance officer positions or ethics and compliance manager positions.

Chris Villanueva 09:51
The thing that I want to do again is giving you that positivity here and the world of opportunity. Continuing to focus on the positive versus, oh, this is the crazy stuff that’s happening in the news, therefore I should be fearful. Another fearful, scary thing you might be seeing in the news as well is the impact and automation and AI on IT. Jobs. Again, shout out to our IT folks, our IT clients at, Let’s Eat, Grandma, that is a pretty big chunk of you. You’ll see in the news that the IT sector experienced a rise in unemployment to 5.7% in January, up from 3.9% in December.

Chris Villanueva 10:27
This is being attributed. Again, attribution can come from all sorts of different things. It’s not a complete science yet, we don’t know. But this increase is currently being attributed to the growing influence of automation and artificial intelligence, which is reducing demand for certain IT roles. Major tech companies have introduced, have announced layoffs contributing to the sector’s employment challenges. Now, if you are in it, this does not mean that your skillset is not valued. This is just due to I think a lot of the changes that are going on. People are experimenting with things. AI hasn’t been fully adopted by any means by companies out there, but we are seeing some interesting things and some shifts.

Chris Villanueva 11:0
You can still continue applying for the positions that you’ve been in. Say for example you are a software developer or a manager, IT manager, you can continue applying or you can open up the types of positions you were applying for. Here are some ideas of roles you can apply for. Despite the changes that we’re seeing right now in ai. There are those AI positions themselves. There’s AI ethics and governance, there’s machine learning engineer positions, there’s ai, prompt engineer.

Chris Villanueva 11:42
So as AI adoption grows, companies are going to need people to refine and optimize AI generated outputs because of all the things that you know right now. Cybersecurity and risk management is huge right now. I’m seeing a lot of people apply to those roles right now. Cybersecurity analyst positions, for example, will work to secure threats as we see automation and AI entering right now. So this is going to be a stable career moving forward as well as penetration tester governance risk and compliance analyst positions and other sort of positions like that you may want to consider applying for cloud or DevOps positions. Positions such as cloud engineer or a DevOps engineer. As AI automates deployments, companies still need experts to manage and optimize DevOps pipelines.

Chris Villanueva 12:30
So there is a world of opportunity out there for you and I encourage you, no matter what your situation looks like, maybe you just started in your job search and you’re optimistic and excited or you’ve been going at it for over a year now. I would encourage you to keep moving, keep putting one step in front of the other and know that you have something great in front of you here. So this was the news again, one 43,000, not as great as I thought. I would’ve guessed much higher than that, but the market is still okay right now and things are still solid. I will report to you if the news headlines say otherwise, but I encourage you to check out our next podcast. We’re going to be doing a q and a for questions that you submit for your resume. So you can submit your resume into us at letseatgrandma.com and if you so choose, we can actually give you a breakdown and answer questions about your resume here so you’ll hear some really tactical and actionable tips next week.

Chris Villanueva 13:29
Alright, thank you so much for tuning in. This is the Career Warrior Podcast. Can’t wait to see you next time, Career Warrior Podcast. And before you go, remember if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at, Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention, you’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.