LinkedIn Workforce Report | Seattle | February 2017

Over 133 million workers in the U.S. have LinkedIn profiles; thousands of companies in the U.S. use LinkedIn to recruit; millions of jobs are posted on LinkedIn in the U.S. every month; and members can add over 50,000 skills to their profiles to showcase their professional brands. That gives us unique and valuable insight into U.S. workforce trends.

The LinkedIn Workforce Report is a monthly report on employment trends in the U.S. workforce. It’s divided into two sections: a U.S. section that provides insights into hiring, skills gaps, and migration trends across the country, and a City section that provides insights into localized employment trends in 10 of the largest U.S. cities: AtlantaChicagoDallasHoustonLos AngelesNew York CityPhiladelphiaSan FranciscoSeattle, and Washington, D.C.

Our vision is to create economic opportunity for every worker in the global workforce. We hope you’ll use insights from our report to better navigate your career - whether you’re unemployed and wondering if hiring is improving in your industry, exploring new skills to learn to make yourself more attractive to employers, or considering a move and curious which cities need your skills most.

Hiring

Good news for jobseekers: Hiring was 10.5% higher in January 2017 than January 2016, and seasonally-adjusted hiring (hiring that excludes seasonal hiring variations - like companies hiring less in December due to the holiday season) was 4.9% higher in January 2017 than December 2016. If your New Year’s resolution is finding a new job, check out LinkedIn Jobs because new jobs are opening up in Seattle!

Skills Gap

A skills gap is a mismatch between the skills employers need (demand) and the skills workers have (supply). There is an abundance of skills when supply exceeds demand. There is a scarcity of skills when demand exceeds supply. A city with a scarcity of skills needs more workers with certain skills, while a city with an abundance of skills has too many workers with certain skills.

Seattle’s skills gap is caused by a scarcity of workers with certain skills.

Here are the skills Seattle has in scarcity.

If you live in Seattle and are interested in learning these skills, check out the LinkedIn Learning courses below - they’ll teach you related skills so you’ll be more attractive to employers in the city.

Here are the skills Seattle has in abundance. As you can see, the city has an abundance of technology skills - like Perl/Python/Ruby, cloud and distributed computing, and C/C++. If you have these skills, consider learning the skills in scarcity above to better stand out from the pack.

Migration

Seattle gained the most workers in the last 12 months from San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. So for every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Seattle, 8.4 workers moved to the city in the last year from San Francisco.

Boise, Eugene, and San Antonio gained the most workers from Seattle in the last 12 months. So for every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Seattle, 0.2 workers moved to Boise in the last year.