Mass layoffs across an ever-growing number of mighty tech companies are a sign that America’s formidable jobs machine has slowed. But the American labor market is still whirring, adding more than 250,000 positions in October. The number of  job openings across developed economies remains near record highs, too, and the unemployment rate near record lows.

So we wondered: which companies are hiring aggressively, despite the economic storm clouds ahead? What are the most in-demand positions and locations? We turned to our job listings data for some answers, focusing especially on the Travel & Leisure, Energy, and Utilities industries.

1. Travel & Leisure

The post-COVID travel surge shows no sign of slowing down, so the travel industry’s hiring spree continues. This includes companies in the travel tech space: the number of job listings at Tripadvisor is up 78.5% over the past two years. Job listings at Expedia and Airbnb are up 52.8% and 25%, respectively, over the same time period.

What roles and skillsets are in high demand across travel tech companies? We created a word cloud based on Tripadvisor’s job listings by category, and found that the company is focused primarily on Sales and Engineering roles, as they have been for several quarters. But more recently, Tripadvisor has recruited heavily for roles in Product Management and Marketing & Communications, too.

In April, Airbnb famously announced its “design for employees to live and work anywhere”, presented as an industry-leading flexible work policy for Airbnb employees. But our data shows the company has pivoted away from hiring in high-cost, high-salary locations - like San Francisco, where Airbnb job listings are down 72% year-on-year. Instead, it is hiring in cities like Gurugram and Bengaluru, in India, where job postings are up by 137.5% and 100%, respectively, over the past year.

Hiring across major airlines is down from the peaks hit earlier this year, when the revenge-travel era was in full swing, but remains strong. Job postings at American Airlines and Jet Blue are up by 233.3% and 268.8%, respectively, over the past two years. Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair is even more bullish, with vacancies up 279.3% over the same time period across its European hubs in Dublin, Wroclaw, Madrid, and elsewhere.

Hiring at Ryanair

2. Energy & Utilities

Sky-high energy prices have been so favorable for the oil and gas giants that President Biden has accused them of “war profiteering”. War has certainly been good for the industry’s workers: job listings at British Petroleum are up 574% over the past two years, in a remarkable turnaround for the beleaguered company. Vacancies at Hess and ExxonMobil are up by 387.5% and 227.9%, respectively, over the same period.

We created a word cloud based on ExxonMobil’s job listings by category, and found that the company is focused primarily on Engineering, Commercial and Business, and Operations roles.

Utilities companies are also benefiting from high energy prices. The number of open job listings at Edison International (+88.1%), Con Edison (+151.6%), and NextEra Energy (+85.7%) has soared this year. Among large American utilities companies, only the Pacific Gas and Electric company is slowing down hiring: vacancies are down -44.3% this year.

3. Conclusion

Jobs growth across all industries in the United States is trending down, as shown in the heatmap below. But some industries continue to recruit aggressively - if not quite at the same clip as earlier this year. Using Thinknum’s Job Listings data, which tracks job postings across 11,000 public and private companies around the world, we were able to drill down and understand the underlying dynamics of a labor market that continues to release contradictory signals.