Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, before we go into product updates, I want to take some time to address what\u2019s happening in the market today. With the large central banks increasing interest rates, high inflation and the constant news cycle of layoffs in tech can make anyone pessimistic about the future. However, the way I see it, it\u2019s not as bad as it sounds looking at the US labor department\u2019s data for October 2022. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The overall labor market and labor demand remains tight. Overall separations (discharges + quits) decreased in October by 10.9% compared to September. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gap between open positions and available workers widened to 4.9 million from 4.2 million a month ago. That\u2019s almost a 17% increase in 1 month <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US National Retail Federation predicts America will spend between 940 and 960 billion USD this holiday season – compared to about 860 billion last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wage growth at 4.7% compared to inflation of 7.7% – meaning that wages are coming down making it cheaper for companies to staff up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are definite risks ahead of us and we know things aren\u2019t all good. But, market conditions might not be as bad as they sound. There is a lot of uncertainty ahead of us but a good thing to do is to keep an eye on the data rather than the news\/social media cycle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With that out of the way, onto the product updates! We got a lot of housekeeping done this month. Here are a few things we came up with.\u00a0As always, here’s a TL;DR video. <\/p>\n\n\n\n