Welcome to a special subscriber-only edition of my weekly newsletter, where I address reader questions about building products, driving growth, and advancing careers. Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about layoffs, company shutdowns, and jobs being replaced by AI, which can be pretty worrying if you’re struggling to find a job. So, is the job market tougher for your role, or is this a general trend?
Today, I’m thrilled to share some fresh data about the state of the product job market. This information comes from Live Data Technologies, a company that uses advanced methods to gather near-real-time employment data in the U.S. They monitor job changes for over 88 million people by leveraging major search engines and a proprietary process. Typically, their data is sold to investors, startups, HR organizations, and media outlets, but they’ve agreed to collaborate with me to provide insights specifically for this newsletter. Special thanks to Jason Saltzman for making this possible.
We focused on analyzing the 10 most popular product and product-related roles: Product Managers, Engineers, Designers, Growth roles, User Researchers, Data Scientists, Sales, Marketing, Product Owners, and Scrum Masters. Below, I’ve summarized the key highlights and interesting findings from the data:
1. Growth roles are experiencing the fastest growth right now.
This was surprising to me. I’ve always seen growth roles as a niche area, not one that’s booming. However, I now understand why. As the market rebounds, companies are intensifying their focus on growth. Interestingly, growth roles are expanding at a much quicker rate than sales and marketing roles, which are also on the rise. This could signal a shift towards product-led growth, driven by a need for capital efficiency—a priority for investors and public markets.
To put things in perspective, there are around 80,000 active growth roles in the U.S., with 1,000 to 2,000 new growth hires each month. If you’re interested in a growth role, here are the companies that have hired the most growth professionals recently: HubSpot, Salesforce, TikTok, Velera, Amazon, Enpal, Headway, Pocket FM, Uber, Accenture, Atlassian, Compass, MongoDB, AI Digital, Google, CrowdStrike, AECOM, Adobe, Airwallex, Askable, Grab, Media.Monks, Traba, and Walmart.
2. Product management roles are holding steady.
Looking at the product management (PM) roles over the past 2.5 years, there was a hiring surge through 2022, followed by a steady state in the past 1.5 years. This seems healthy, suggesting that PM roles aren’t shrinking but also not growing as rapidly as before. Currently, there are about 450,000 active PMs in the U.S., with 2,500 to 4,500 hires each month.
For comparison, engineering roles show a similar growth trajectory, with a slight slowdown in the past couple of years, though less pronounced than PMs. This appears to be a positive trend.
If you’re on the lookout for a PM role, the top companies hiring PMs recently include the following (list omitted for brevity).
I hope this data provides some clarity on the current job market. If you’re a subscriber, feel free to join our Slack community to connect with others in your local area.