Triangle job market may be cooling a bit – big job boards show a decline

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Job openings across the U.S. climbed to a new high of 10.1 million in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week. And Triangle-area employers have consistently added thousands of new job openings every week throughout the summer – but there are signs some cooling may be happening.

Some national job boards are showing notable gains. Wake County employers added 1,155 jobs on Adzuna over the past seven days, while Glassdoor shows 1,583 new jobs listed across the Triangle area from this time last week.

However, week-to-week figures dropped on other major sites. Dice.com, which tracks tech-sector positions, shows declines totaling -640 in Raleigh, -695 in Durham and -1,739 in Chapel Hill. ZipRecruiter had 629 fewer jobs in Chapel Hill and 119 fewer in Durham from a week ago.

Overall, despite those drops, thousands of jobs remain open despite the spread of the Delta COVID variant.

But more companies – IBM being the latest as reported by Reuters on Friday – are requiring workers to be vaccinated before being allowed to return to the office. The tech giant is still looking to fill more than 2,000 jobs across the Triangle, according to NCWorks.

And IBM-owned Red Hat, which also requires vaccinations of workers heading back to offices at some point, is looking to fill scores of jobs for both remote as well as in-office spots.

Why do so many jobs remain open? One reason is the ongoing turbulence being created in the economy by the ongoing disruption caused by the pandemic.

“The labor market is undergoing substantial disruption as economists call it,” says N.C. State economist Dr. Mike Walden. “The post pandemic economy is changing as sectors like warehousing, transportation, and technology are undergoing accelerated growth as a result of trends from the pandemic. Plus, a substantial number of workers have used the last year to reevaluate their job situation and even acquire new skills so they can find better jobs.”

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WRAL TechWire is tracking the Triangle’s job trends as the region continues its economic recovery. Our weekly Jobs Report compiles the latest information from the region’s top job boards, offering a breakdown of how many jobs are posted, which companies are hiring and for what positions. We’ve also included upcoming job fairs, student-centric resources and a list of Twitter accounts that track local job openings.

Today’s Jobs Report shows notable hiring activity across the board, from large companies like pharma giant Merck & Co. to health care systems like WakeMed Health and Hospitals to startups like insurance tech firm Policygenius.

Let’s highlight what’s new on the job boards since last week’s Jobs Report:

National Job Search Sites

Here’s an overview of the number of local jobs posted on national job boards compared to last week:

Adzuna:
- ⇑ Wake County: 36,227 jobs (+1,155 from a week ago)
- ⇑ Raleigh: 20,549 (+522)
- ⇑ Durham County: 9,963 (+264)
Dice.com (using the 5-mile radius filter):
- ⇓ Raleigh: 13,648 (-640)
- ⇓ Durham: 13,385 (-695)
- ⇓ Chapel Hill: 13,130 (-1,739)
Glassdoor: ⇑ 50,090 jobs across the Triangle area (+1,583)
Indeed (5-mile radius filter):
- ⇑ Raleigh: 12,995 (+163)
- ⇑ Durham: 6,667 (+177)
- ⇓ Chapel Hill: 3,392 (-19)
InHerSight: Pages upon pages of jobs across the RTP area
LinkedIn (using the “exact location” filter):
- ⇓ Raleigh: 24,596 (-110)
- ⇑ Durham: 13,246 (+650)
- ⇓ Chapel Hill: 2,429 (-80)
Manpower (20-mile radius):
- ⇓ Raleigh: 18 (-2)
- ⇓ Durham: 11 (-3)
- ⇓ Chapel Hill: 10 (-4)
Remote Tech Jobs: Several remote jobs offered by Triangle-area employers
ZipRecruiter (5-mile filter):
- ⇑ Raleigh: 37,605 (+335)
- ⇓ Durham: 14,545 (-119)
- ⇓ Chapel Hill: 3,914 (-629)

Startup Job Search Sites

Aside from the boards above, job seekers can also find local startup jobs at SimplyHired (223 startup jobs near Research Triangle Park), LinkedIn (1,521 results in and around Raleigh), Indeed (258 startup jobs in/near RTP), and AngelList (job openings in Raleigh, Durham and across North Carolina).

AMA Triangle

AMA Triangle, the fifth-largest chapter in American Marketing Association’s nationwide network, aims to be a go-to resource for all things marketing in the Triangle — serving over 470 members. AMA Triangle provides professional training, free career webinars and a job board offering free resume placement for marketing professionals. Every month, it hosts a free “Transitions Mastermind” program for job seekers and those seeking advice on career improvement.

AMA Triangle’s job board currently shows 108 marketing jobs in Raleigh, 37 results in Durham and 36 results in Chapel Hill (with the 25-mile radius filter).

Several jobs were added over the past week:

Raleigh-based The Diversity Movement is hiring a director of marketing.
Pharma giant Merck & Co. posted several listings for regional marketing liaisons at its Triangle offices.
The law firm Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein is looking to add a business development and digital marketing specialist at its Raleigh office.

American Underground

Durham-based startup hub American Underground regularly posts job openings on its job board. Job seekers can filter their search by job function, location, company, industry and job title. As of Sunday evening, the site shows 214 jobs at 30 companies.

Several jobs were posted in the last seven days:

Insurtech startup Policygenius added several job listings in Durham: Customer success team lead, client experience lead, technical recruiter, junior case management associate, junior underwriting experience associate, two case management associates, bilingual junior case management associate, licensing associate and director of acquisition marketing.
Durham-based payments software provider Spreedly is hiring a remote software engineer.
Local telecommunication firm Relay seeks an associate product manager in Raleigh.
Health care firm Aledade is looking for an operations analyst in Durham.
Insurtech startup Noyo is hiring a remote content strategist.
Edtech startup Upswing seeks a remote product director.

Bio Jobs Hub

Earlier this year, WRAL TechWire and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center launched a Bio Jobs Hub platform focused on biopharma manufacturing — one of North Carolina’s largest industries, employing over 26,000 people.

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Typical biopharma jobs include process technicians, maintenance and/or instrumentation technicians, quality assurance and quality control associates, process development scientists and process engineers. This industry also offers competitive entry-level salaries, from $42,000 to $60,000.

Scientists, skilled laborers and recent graduates can use the Bio Jobs Hub resource to find career and training opportunities in their area. Users can search by location, job category/activity and region.

Many biopharma companies are hiring in the Triangle, including large employers like Biogen in Research Triangle Park, bioMérieux in Durham, GSK in Zebulon, Merck & Co. in Durham, Novo Nordisk in Durham and Clayton, Pfizer in Sanford, and many more.

NCBiotech

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s extensive jobs board lists open jobs and internships from local life science companies and research organizations. Users can filter by job category, employment type (full-time, part-time and contractor), keywords, postal code and radius.

NCBiotech also touts jobs through its Bio Jobs Hub program.

Over the last week (since Aug. 9), over a dozen new jobs were added to NCBiotech’s board, including:

Associate scientist/scientist at KNOW Bio in Durham
Vice president of clinical operations at Propella Therapeutics in Pittsboro
Research technician at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute in Durham
Accessioning tech and histotechnologist at Foundation Medicine in Morrisville
Associate director/director of clinical QA and director of analytical development at Shattuck Labs in Durham
Director of laboratory operations at Altis Biosystems in Durham
Laboratory technician at Mimetics in Durham
GMP analyst, principal investigator, proposal writer, QA engineer, sample management technician, scientist and GMP scientist at BioAgilytix in Durham
Histotechnologist, research associate scientist and two research associates at Asklepios BioPharmaceuticals in Durham
R&D intern and quality assurance supervisor at Panaceutics Nutrition in RTP
Research associate at Altis Biosystems in Durham
Pharma giant Merck & Co. posted several new jobs at its Triangle locations:
- Director of technical operations engineering
- Quality control manager
- Senior warehousing tech
- Senior QA specialist in information technology
- Senior medical writer
- Senior QA specialist
- Senior operations specialist
- Lead technician
- Engineering specialist
- Manager of maintenance
Local staffing firm Frankel Staffing Partners posted a job for a sales operations and effectiveness administrator for its client, a high-growth pharmaceutical firm in the Raleigh area.

NC TECH

The North Carolina Technology Association (NC TECH) has an interactive job board you can use to find your next career opportunity. Users can search by keyword, location, category, type (contract, full-time, part-time or temp to full-time), experience and education level.

Two remote jobs were added in the last week:

IT consulting firm 360 Cloud Solutions is hiring a remote senior NetSuite consultant.
Jackrabbit Technologies, a class management platform for children’s activity centers, seeks a remote senior UI/UX designer. The company is located in Huntersville, just outside of Charlotte, but it allows all employees to work remotely.

Raleigh Founded

Raleigh Founded, a startup incubator and coworking space, has its own job board. Job seekers can filter results by company, company size or industry.

The site currently lists 169 positions at 27 companies, as of Sunday afternoon. Several new jobs were added over the past week:

Veeva Systems, a cloud software provider, is growing its Raleigh team with several new positions:
- Product manager focusing on R&D and quality
- Remote customer success manager
- Remote customer strategist
- Content manager
- Case processing efficiency specialist
- Case processing efficiency manager
- Senior software engineer (Python)
AI startup Pyron is hiring two software engineers in Raleigh.
Raleigh startup Pendo added listings for a senior director of commercial sales and an engineering manager of production operations.

Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster

This isn’t a job board per se, but the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster’s list of job search sources is a helpful resource for job seekers in the clean energy sector. The list has links to career opportunities from the organization’s members and partners.

Work in the Triangle

Work in the Triangle, a Wake County Economic Development program, shares new openings daily through its Twitter feed, @WorkTriangleNC. And the search continues to be intense for talent to fill thousands of open jobs both inside and outside the Triangle tech sector.

Every Tuesday, Work in the Triangle’s #TriangleTuesdays hashtag lists hot jobs.

Posts from last Tuesday (Aug. 10) included openings from:

Scroll through the #TriangleTuesdays hashtag on Twitter for more details on the openings.

New Jobs at CureMint

American Underground-based CureMint, a startup with a procurement software platform for dental organizations, tells TechWire it is looking to add new talent to its team. It has openings for several positions:

Senior full stack software engineer
Senior product manager
Product manager

New Jobs at Terra Dotta

Chapel Hill-based edtech company Terra Dotta tells TechWire it’s looking to fill several jobs across its product development, sales, support, finance and accounting teams.

Open positions include senior software engineer, junior software engineer, software architect and product owner. Interested job seekers can read more and apply here.

The company’s CEO, Anthony Rotoli, cited the return of international travel and new developments in the education technology industry as reasons to ramp up hiring.

“We remained conservative with hiring during the pandemic, but we’ve had tremendous growth and are now expanding our team in the Triangle area and beyond to deliver on the increasing interest in global engagement opportunities and the technology to support it – both with travel resuming and with the evolution of new ways to deliver international education experiences virtually and on college campuses,” Rotoli stated.

Upcoming Job Fairs

PNC Arena Part-Time Job Fair: Aug. 21, 4-7 p.m. @PNC Arena

The PNC Arena is looking to hire 500 new part-time employees through its job fair next Tuesday. Open positions include bartenders, cashiers, changeover crew, cooks, event security, parking attendants and more. Check out WRAL’s coverage here.

24th Annual NIEHS Biomedical Career Symposium: Aug. 26-27 (online)

Now in its 24th year, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ annual Biomedical Career Symposium is among the largest gatherings of RTP-area biomedical organizations and scientists. Postdoctoral fellows and graduate students can attend this virtual event to explore new career options and grow their networks. More TechWire coverage here.

NCWorks Orange County Southern Hospitality Hiring Series: Aug. 27, 9. a.m. – 12 p.m. @Europa Center in Chapel Hill

This summer, NCWorks of Orange County is hosting a series of hiring events featuring local restaurants, hotels, craft brewing companies, caterers, venues and more hospitality industry employers.

CRO Career Conversations: September 8, 5:30-7 p.m. (online)

In this virtual event, attendees will hear from contract research organization (CRO) industry professionals as they discuss their career paths and responsibilities.

NC TECH Virtual Job Expo: Oct. 20, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. (online)

The North Carolina Technology Association’s virtual job fair will connect employers to job seekers looking for work in a tech role or to support a tech company. The event is free for candidates and job seekers.

Wake Tech Community College Business & IT Spring 2022 Career Fair: Feb. 9, 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. (online)

In February 2022, Wake Tech will host an online job fair for business and information technology students looking for new career opportunities.

Job Resources for Local Students

If you’re a student looking for an internship or entry-level position at a local company or organization, your university has resources to help you get started. Quick links below: