Conversation Starter: New Year, New You, New Job

The new year is an opportunity to debut a new you and for many American workers, that means finding a new job. January is the month with the most Americans looking for jobs, according to Glassdoor data.

After a lull in job search during the holiday months, job seeker activity typically rebounds in the new year with activity 17% higher in January than in a typical month. 

In particular, the week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 15) tends to be the most active job-seeking week of the year, with 22% more job seeker activity than a typical week. Job seeking remains elevated in late-January and February before tapering back to normal levels by mid-March.

For employers looking for talent, getting job postings up as soon as possible in the new year can help you get in front of candidates looking for a new role. Many employers are slow to put up new job postings in the new year, giving nimble employers a chance to benefit from posting when job seeker interest is high and competition is low.

For job seekers, the new year is a great way to motivate yourself to explore new opportunities. Just like all new year’s resolutions, the first few weeks are often easy, but carrying that momentum forward later in the year can be a challenge. Partnering with a friend to keep each other accountable, ask for advice on your applications and practice for interviews can be a good way to stay motivated.

Methodology

To find the busiest week/month for job seeker activity, we look at job applications started on Glassdoor from March 2017 through December 2023 and use the prophet package to decompose seasonality from the data. We then aggregate the day-of-year, day-of-week and holiday seasonality components to calculate the usual seasonality without any underlying trend. The percent difference calculated relative to the average activity across the whole year.

These projections are illustrative and not indicative of business performance. They are based solely on seasonal effects and assume no change in the underlying trend, which may or may not hold depending on how the economy evolves.

Conversation Starters are a periodic series of charts and data points from Glassdoor’s Economic Research team aimed at sparking conversations on timely trends in employee satisfaction, workplace community, the future of work, and the labor market more broadly.