US Professional and Technical Services Sector NAICS 54

Jun 18, 2025 - US Public Companies Shedding White-Collar Workers

• Publicly-traded US companies have shed 3.5% of their white-collar employees from 2022 to 2025, per employment data provider Live Data Technologies, as corporate America shifts to leaner workforces that work harder. The cycle of layoffs in down markets and hiring surges in profitable times is changing as sales and profits have boomed in recent years despite widespread staffing cuts. Companies are also becoming more efficient thanks to AI tools and other technology advancements. Management ranks in particular have been thinned out. In the last three years, public companies have cut managers by 6.1% and executives by 4.6%, leaving organizations more flat and asking existing employees to work harder. The trend reflects a reversal of the post-pandemic leverage rank-and-file employees enjoyed during the resulting white-collar boom. However, companies risk inviting employee morale issues and reduced productivity due to higher workloads and less staff.
• Recent college and high school graduates face a tough job market and are struggling to find work, despite an overall US unemployment rate of about 4%. For new college graduates looking for work, the unemployment rate is closer to 6.6% for the 12 months ending in May 2025. According to the US Labor Department, it is the highest level of unemployment for that group in a decade (minus the pandemic) and a 6% increase from the same period the year prior. By comparison, those ages 35 to 44 with a college degree have a 2.2% unemployment rate during that same stretch. An overall hiring slowdown in America in the face of economic worry about the economy is largely to blame. Hiring slowdowns don’t directly affect existing workers or always lead to layoffs, but they disproportionately hit those without a job, especially graduates looking for that first real job.

• The technology industry is slowly moving back to coastal bases of operation as the trend of growing regional tech hubs in cities like Austin, Texas abates, according to a report from venture capital firm SignalFire. Austin in particular, which had been luring California-based tech companies with promises of lower taxes and quality of life improvements, saw tech employment fall 1.6% in 2024 and startup employment fall 4.6%. Other regional hubs including Dallas, Houston, Toronto, and Denver also saw shrinking tech employment, while employment grew in coastal locales of New York City and San Francisco. Return-to-office mandates in regional areas, along with AI-driven businesses increasingly centralized in the Bay Area has employees and employers ditching regional aspirations and moving out. San Francisco saw tech employment increase 1.8% in 2024, while New York City, which grew 2.2%, is luring AI companies seeking to sell to large enterprises.
• A global workplace report from Gallup found that while remote workers are more engaged than their hybrid or in-office counterparts, they feel more work-related stress and are less likely to thrive in their lives. Fully remote workers are 31% more likely to be engaged in work (measured as enthusiasm for their job and attachment to their team/organization), compared to hybrid roles (23%) and on site employees (19%). The freedom of remote work comes with psychological downsides, per the report, with feelings of isolation giving way to overall stress about their jobs, loneliness without the camaraderie of in-person coworkers, too much autonomy leading to time management problems, and frustrations with the technology required to collaborate. The results were consistent across salary ranges. Companies that prioritize addressing these issues have only 38% of employees looking for new job opportunities, building more sustainable and better long-term performance.