State of the product job market, part 2
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Lots of questions came up after publishing my last product jobs report, so I’m back with a follow-up.
This analysis is based on exclusive data from two companies that I’m partnering with:
TrueUp, which tracks new job openings across all tech companies globally
Live Data Technologies, which tracks job changes (hires, departures, and promotions) across all companies in the U.S.
Combining these two data sources reveals a whole new perspective on what’s really happening in the job market.
Some of my biggest takeaways from this data:
There’s indeed a shift to hiring more senior PMs
Remote PM jobs are shrinking fast (down 35% from peak, and still shrinking)
More than one in five open PM roles is based in the San Francisco Bay Area (and still growing)
Bengaluru, India, is now the most popular location outside the U.S. for PM roles
The three most common hard skills that hiring managers are looking for from PMs are SQL, Jira, and experience with LLMs
The fastest-shrinking roles right now are diversity and scrum masters
Machine-learning engineers and data engineers are the most in-demand tech functions right now
Loads more surprises and insights in the data below.
I’m going to continue working with these companies to track job market data and share regular updates on what’s changing in the product hiring market every few months or so. If there’s any data or questions you want us to dig into, please let me know in the comments.
Big thank-you to Amit Taylor from TrueUp and Jason Saltzman from Live Data Technologies. To learn more about TrueUp, check out this custom one-stop page they made for me that includes every product and growth job at every top tech startup and big tech company (16,500 open roles). They scan every open job at every top tech company in real time and then use AI to categorize and tag each role. To learn more about Live Data Technologies, check them out here. To collect their data, they use prompt engineering in major search engines (Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, etc.) to capture near-real-time data on employment changes in the U.S. Leveraging this publicly available information, they use a proprietary process to monitor the most up-to-date employment status for white-collar workers and millions of job changes monthly.
How’s the PM job market looking overall?
We are in the middle of a slow recovery that started in Q1 of this year, and the recovery is holding steady.
After a peak in early 2022 (with over 10,000 open roles) and a significant slowdown through 2023 (to about 4,000 open roles), there are currently 5,752 open product manager roles at tech companies globally.
Has there been a shift to hiring more senior product roles?
Indeed there has. But, the shift isn’t huge.
Below are two charts showing roles by PM level at tech companies globally. The first chart shows the proportion of open jobs by level over time, and the second chart shows the absolute number of open jobs by level.
The data shows that, yes, new Senior and above PM roles do appear to be growing at a faster rate than other levels. If you look at the light blue and dark blue segments below (i.e. Senior and Lead/Senior++ roles), you can see they have definitely grown from early 2023 in the percentage of PMs being hired. In particular, Lead/Senior++ roles are growing their percentage of open roles the fastest. And the share of Entry/Mid-level roles (the pink segment) has decreased the most since early 2023.
That being said, Entry/Mid-level make up over a third of open PM roles and are recovering at a rate similar to Senior roles. So there are still plenty of opportunities for early-career PMs.
Drilling into the down-leveling question, here’s an amazing chart from Live Data Technologies showing the number of hires who went down a level in their new job. This down-leveling spiked in early 2022 and is now at nearly the lowest levels since 2019. That’s great news.
Which companies are hiring PMs most?
If you’re currently looking for a job, here’s the latest data on which tech companies have the most open PM roles:
Here’s a bonus chart that will blow your mind: the top places candidates are coming from when they are hired at one of the top companies hiring PMs. The left side of the chart includes the top five places people come from, meaning that many companies hire from business schools, but for Amazon, it’s their number one source of new hires.
Which cities have the most open PM roles?
The San Francisco Bay Area continues to be the leading location for open product jobs at tech companies (see below). Seattle (mostly Amazon and Microsoft roles) is at #2 and New York is #4.Â
Interestingly, Bengaluru, India, is now the most popular location for PM jobs outside the U.S., and the fourth most popular location globally (not counting “remote”).
The San Francisco Bay Area is ascendant. In just the past two years, the share of open PM roles in the Bay Area went from 15.4% to over 20%—up 25% year over year! Over a fifth of all open PM roles at tech companies are in the Bay Area, and that share seems to be growing.
What about remote product jobs?
Over a fifth of open PM roles globally are OK with remote, but this number is quickly declining—from over 35% of open PM roles two years ago to 22.5% today—nearly a 35% drop. This will be an interesting metric to track.