We can see that the drop in vacancies predates the release of OpenAI’s large language model (LLM). Instead, the fall in job postings dovetails with a period in which the Federal Reserve pressed the brakes on the US economy by raising interest rates by 5 percentage points.
What’s more, because of the post-pandemic surge in openings and hiring, the subsequent reduction appears to reflect a normalisation.
These broad trends in hiring and central bank rate increases hold in many G7 nations during the same period.
There are non-AI drivers of labour market weakness, too. For instance, in Britain the rise in youth unemployment is, in part, linked to the Labour government’s policies, such as payroll tax increases.