2026 February- IX Communities Open Access

IX Communities members were treated to another insightful and engaging presentation to kick off the new year with Andrew Flowers Chief Economist at Appcast, Inc, and a former economist at Indeed and Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Andrew’s “recruitonomics” philosophy advises TA leaders to stay informed about economic variables they cannot control so that they can optimize variables they’re able to control.
Key U.S. market takeaways were a balanced supply/demand labor market with modest job growth, and strong 25-54-year-old labor force participation at 84%. Part of this participation is because “The Great Stay” is yielding a labor market with less churn. This is producing fewer outside options for workers and yielding an especially tight job market for early career/university grads. Interestingly, job hopping is losing its edge as annual wage growth for job switchers is nearly the same as for stayers.
Finally, looking to the future, a more restrictive U.S. immigration policy may result in fewer workers and overall population declines which could renew labor shortages. We then focused on the impact of AI on employment. Andrew shared data that showed over the past three years, employment has increased or decreased in alignment with whether the jobs have low or high AI exposure. Not surprisingly AI skill requirements are being mentioned more and more frequently in Indeed job postings globally and we may be facing AI talent scarcity soon.
We closed with a discussion about the manufacturing sector, the U.K., and India, and the latter’s growth due to the de-coupling of the U.S. and China trade relationship and its population growth trends. We strongly recommend everyone go to recruitonomics-dot-com for even more incredible insight.
An outstanding discussion for everyone in IX Communities!
Thank you again, Andrew!