Layoffs and revenue drops likely in software and payment sector

New analysis of hiring trends across software and payment companies indicates likely layoffs and falls in revenue months before they occur.

Job Market Insights by LinkUp, powered by Exabel, is a powerful platform used to analyze the job listings activity for over 7,000+ companies across sectors and geographies, which can filter for companies of interest and identify inflections and trends in various job activity metrics.

New analysis of software companies with a market cap of more than $100 billion reveals Salesforce showed a 90 percent decline in listings across all roles in management, sales and legal.

Looking at monthly job listing activity over the last year, during June, July and November 2022, Salesforce deleted more jobs than it listed.

This trend was observed months before Salesforce announced a slowdown in its revenue growth in August last year.

Analysis using the Job Market Insights platform by LinkUp also identified signs of an impending layoff before it surfaced publicly in November and January.

Payment companies

Analysis of job listings conducted by Exabel using LinkUp’s Job Market Insights platform identified similar trends in the payment solutions sector.

Mastercard has accelerated hiring over the last one year with an 82 percent annual growth in active job posts.

Meanwhile Mastercard’s primary competitor, Visa, saw a 73 percent year-on-year drop in active job listings, American Express reduced its hiring by 69 percent drop, while Paypal recently announced its second layoffs on Jan 31st where it eliminated close to 7 percent of its workforce.

Toby Dayton, CEO at LinkUp, says: “Exabel’s analysis of companies in the Software and Payment Processing sectors confirms the strong correlation between job openings and a company’s performance, both positive and negative, in the future.

“Salesforce provides a perfect example of this correlation, as the company removed, in bulk, a statistically anomalous number of job openings, whereupon they subsequently announced a round of layoffs and issued lower revenue guidance.”

Toby says: “Investors can use the data on declining – or increasing – job listings to inform decisions about likely successes in particular companies and sectors.”

Neil Chapman, CEO at Exabel, says: “The data driving Job Market Insights enables investors to derive unique investment insights that enhance their fundamental research process way ahead of the traditional information flow via company filings or other sector level reports.

“We’re pleased to be able to power this product and bring investable insights to users with LinkUp’s powerful alternative dataset.”