Week 1: Potential Impact on Labor Markets and TA Technology $$$
Excuse me, can I get off this ride now, please? Job Board Doctor friends, what a week 1 it has been! Wherever you stand on the political spectrum and wherever you are in the world, it’s hard to deny the chaos sparked by Donald Trump’s return to the White House and a bonanza of Executive Orders set to shake up American business.
Regardless of political affiliations, the Job Board Doctor team believes it’s crucial to unpack how the deluge of Executive Orders might impact labor markets, economic stability, job boards, and talent acquisition technology.
Yes, it’s still early days, and as they say, the devil is in the details.
Let’s examine what might be the most impactful Executive Orders released in the first 48 hours of this administration to the labor market and our way of doing business.
Federal Workforce Executive Orders
Nearly half a dozen Day 1 Executive Orders target the federal workforce. Currently, the U.S. federal government employs about 3 million people, excluding the foreign civil service. These employees live and work across every state and territory. The federal government is, in fact, the largest employer in the country—even without counting the ~500,000 U.S. Postal Service workers.
At its peak in 1990, the federal government employed 3.4 million workers. That number hit a low of 2.7 million in 2014.
What’s excluded from this hiring freeze? Positions related to Social Security, the Department of Defense (DoD), Veterans Affairs (VA), and roles tied to national security and public safety.
Within 90 days, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and DOGE (insert eye roll) must present a reduction-in-force (RIF) plan to the White House. Another Executive Order mandates a return-to-office policy, impacting roughly 10% of federal workers, including working parents and employees with disabilities.
Doing the math:
- A 5% RIF equates to 150,000 jobs lost.
- A 10% RIF? 300,000 jobs.
- A 15% RIF? 450,000 jobs.
Returning to 2014 levels would mean 300,000 mostly white-collar workers entering the job market.
Immigration
No one denies that the U.S. immigration system is broken. Approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants—just over 3% of the U.S. population—live in the country. Immigration reform has remained an unsolvable issue for a deeply divided nation and Congress.
Fun Fact: Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to 2.3 million undocumented immigrants in 1986. For more, check out Tom Nichols’ take as a Reagan staffer on this episode of the Bulwark Podcast.
America’s superpower has always been its immigrants—from farmworkers to physicians.
While the morality and logic of removing people who have lived and contributed to the U.S. economy for decades could be debated endlessly, let’s focus on the labor implications of mass deportations.
Currently, immigration levels are at a five-year low.
According to the American Immigration Council’s analysis, California, Texas, and Florida host nearly 50% of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
Industry Breakdown:
- 13.7% of U.S. construction workers are undocumented (~1.5 million workers).
- 12.7% of U.S. agriculture workers are undocumented (~250,000 workers).
- 7.1% of U.S. hospitality workers are undocumented. (~1 million workers).
This doesn’t account for undocumented workers caring for disabled, elderly, and chronically ill Americans, estimated at nearly half a million in New York alone. Nor the real kicker, which is nearly 1.8 million workers in supply chain related roles.
Potential Worker Loss:
- A 5% deportation rate means 550,000 workers gone.
- 10%? 1.1 million.
- 15%? 1.65 million.
The potential economic ripple effects—both in the U.S. and globally—are staggering.
Impact on TA Technology Companies
Labor Force Mismatch
We already struggle to fill roles in labor, healthcare, and supply chain industries. Now add an estimated 500,000 to 1.5 million open positions, plus a federal workforce reduction of 150,000 to 450,000 jobs, and we’re looking at a labor force mismatch of epic proportions.
All the talk about quality candidates? Out the window. It’s back to a top-of-funnel quantity game.
If your business model relies on (Cost per Click) CPC and (Cost per Application) CPA, your heyday might be returning, if you can attract the traffic. But if it’s based on CPH or CPQA, buckle up—you’re in for a rough ride.
Product Mismatch
For general TA tech, the focus will need to shift from “screening out” to “screening in”—in other words, identifying who can be re-skilled, attracting talent into jobs that are already hard to fill, and redefining basic quals....background checks, anyone?
For manual labor roles, wage advertising will be critical.
And let’s be honest: do you see the new and abundant crop of displaced white-collar workers heading out to pick vegetables? Yeah, me neither.
Other areas to keep your eye balls on this week?
A lot of our industry leaders' predictions included the importance of social media advertising over the last couple of weeks, so the TikTok ban and the potential purchase by MrBeast and Employer.com is high on the list.
And next week, we will look at the impact of ending 60 years of federal affirmative action and anti-discrimination could have on our workforce in the short-term and the long-term. Whether you agree or not, you can't get out the path of the train.
Oh, and if you haven't caught up with those 2025 predictions (Part One and Part Two) yet, you gotta. Does anything change in your predictions or business model plans after this week? Let me know.
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