I’ve made no secret that, workwise, 2024 was crap.
Freshly redundant with limited funds, I entered the market.
A job hunt should take three to four months.
Mine? It took twelve.
This felt personal.
One rejection stings. Two rejections hurt. But consistent rejection? Day in, day out? The relentless rollercoaster of optimism and pessimism, picking yourself up after final-stage rejection after final-stage rejection? Having your hopes dashed on the rocks of HR rejection emails?
(This happened to me thirteen times).
… It felt personal.
And that’s from those who act professionally. But the unprofessional (or downright absurd) actors?
Unusual take-home tasks (share your launch on my LinkedIn?!); HR recruiters who can’t give you a yes or a no after four months?1 This was after a fourth stage in-person “meet the team” just near St Paul’s. Well-known firm in its space. Take home task was reading, summarising, and visualising 200+ pages of legal documents. Yup. Four months of me chasing HR on a reply.; Those who ghost like a poor Tinder date?2Household name property consultancy/estate agent. I never got a rejection, even though, to be fair, I got to meet one of my professional heroes at an in-person interview.
It makes you wonder if in your previous life you ticked off an economist who’s gone to heaven and now holding the fate of millions of workers lives, sees your name and goes “David Heasman?! That asshole?! Screw that guy. I’m going to make his life hell.”
But much as it feels that way, it isn’t personal.
2024 was crap for me and crap for others. 2023 was crap for some. So was 2025. So is 2026.
Why?
Because of this chart.
This is the ONS Jobs Vacancy Survey.
Spanning a decade, it shows how many open jobs there are in the market.
At a glance, we can see what’s happened in the past five years.
June 2020: The job market didn’t just crash; it plummeted. Global and developed economies around the world rushed to deliver unprecedented interventions: the UK’s furlough scheme, the US’s stimulus cheques, France’s Activité Partielle, Australia’s JobKeeper Payment…
November 2020: The pandemic bounce back. Jobs are created at a faster pace than we’d seen in a long, long time.
June 2021: There are more jobs available than before the financial crash…
September 2021: IT’S BOOM TIME BABY. THIS TRAIN IS NEVER GOING TO END.
… in other words “The Great Resignation”; with so many jobs being created, workers have options. Labour votes with their feet, and employers up their reward packages as a response to the war for talent.
May 2022: The bounce back peaks.
December 2023: But what goes up must come down.
August 2024: Job vacancies return to their pre-covid peak.
June 2025: The rapid decline in vacancies slows.
August 2026: The latest data as of writing. For context, the number of vacancies we have open now? This was once considered healthy. When? The peak before the 2008 financial crash.
This chart shows this isn’t personal. The job market is weird at the moment. We are recovering from a once-in-a-generation pandemic. Which, on top of unprecedented government help, forced us to stay indoors. Which meant everyone saved their money because they couldn’t spend it.
So when things opened up, people had lots of cash to spend, and this created lots and lots of jobs. But then that money dried up, and the jobs market also dried up. And we’re still finding what the spirit level is in the economy.
Of course, there are other factors. Geopolitical tensions that take one back to the 1970s (or the 1920s). A question mark over future energy supplies. A new technology that is either going to change everything, doom us all, or make us stupid. (Or turn out to be an overhyped dud3 LLMs do not have world models embedded in them, which are looking like a requirement for any form of Artificial General Intelligence, or an ubiquitous technology that will disrupt white collar work. Plain English example – these damn things don’t understand abstract concepts such as time and space, the way all organic life on Earth does. More in Gary Marcus’s 2020 paper here The Next Decade in AI: Four Steps Towards Robust Artificial Intelligence.). Frothy stock markets that are unsustainable. Bond markets reminding governments they need to balance their books
But yet, as I look at this chart, I see my own story.
March 2020: Lockdown commences and I, like everyone, feared I was going to lose my job.
October 2020: After a summer of Eat Out to Help Out, I make new friends as LandTech has a new starter every week.
May 2021: LandTech’s headcount doubles in the span of a year. I go from the new guy to being part of the furniture. I’m sought out on various questions. I weave stories and myths about the company’s past over drinks.
August 2021: What a summer. It felt like the music would go on and on. I see people leave for much higher-paying jobs and incredible benefits. I start getting headhunted for the first time in my entire career.
April 2022: I decline a competing job offer.4 I only share this to show the personal lens of this chart. I nearly deleted it on revision as it came across as braggy, but kept it in due to its relevancy (and showing the role of luck/things outside your control). Also, this is a “rags to riches” story.
December 2022: LandTech’s redundancies begin in earnest.
June 2023: … more redundancies. But my amazing manager pushes through my overdue promotion. (Though aren’t all promotions overdue?)
December 2023: “Tis just a scratch” – I’m made redundant.
January 2024: The worst job hunt of my entire career begins…
December 2024: …and ends on Christmas Eve with an email changing everything. A job offer. There is fizz.
The ups and downs of the job market aren’t personal. You have value outside of it. Don’t let the cyclical boom and bust of markets5As long as humans exist, there will be societies. And as long as societies exist, there will be markets. And as long as markets exist, there will be booms and busts. Booms and busts exist in all economic systems. During the Middle Ages there were booms and busts. During ancient times there were booms and busts. Heck, the Bronze Age collapse was arguably a civilisation-ending economic bust. Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”, in my opinion, was a boom and a bust., fuelled by a once-in-a-generation pandemic affect how you see yourself, or how others see you.
But at the same time… the job market is personal. Your highs and lows can be tied to it.
Perspective helps.
There will be good times.
There will be bad times.
Booms and busts.
It’s just the way it is.
Epilogue: I was reminded during my hunt that it is from the worst of times that new things grow. A final-stage rejection along the lines of “I was too senior” pushed me to pivot from marketing to data. I’ve developed new skills in a new industry, and I greatly enjoy it. 2024 might have been crap, but looking back, it might have been one of the best years of my professional life.
Another thing that can feel personal, but isn’t, is inflation and interest rates.
After all, they affect the cost of housing, the cost of food, and the cost of borrowing.
…And the jobs market.
I’ve written and visualised the history of UK interest rates going back to 1694.
You can read it by clicking the button below.