Economists see real hiring uptick behind the September Surge
Job postings typically rise in September and October, and economists say the seasonal pattern is real, but the current labor market remains slow for applicants.
Job seekers who spent the summer sending out applications may find more opportunities this month, as economists confirm that a seasonal hiring bump known as the September Surge has a factual basis in labor-market data. The phenomenon, which gained attention on social media in recent years, reflects a recurring pattern in which employers increase job postings after the summer slowdown and before the holiday season begins.
Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics offered encouraging signs heading into September. U.S. employers added 162,000 jobs in August, while estimates for June and July were revised up by a combined 55,000 jobs. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%. Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of economics for the Americas, said economists typically adjust labor-market data to remove predictable seasonal swings, but those swings can still matter to job seekers.
“You see more job postings in September than you do any other time during the year, and that happens year after year,” Kantenga said. A 2025 LinkedIn Economic Graph analysis of labor-market seasonality found that job postings generally peak in the spring and early summer, often around May, then decline. But the U.S., along with several other English-speaking and Nordic countries, experiences another peak around September and October.
In the U.S., LinkedIn’s data show postings in August dip 3% below March levels before rising to 14% above March levels in September and 11% above in October. However, the data also reveal a mismatch in applications, which typically peak between January and May before declining through much of the rest of the year. Even in countries where postings rise again in the fall, applications generally do not show the same increase, which Kantenga said can leave an opening for people who continue looking later in the year.
“If there are only five jobs available, but you’re the only person looking, that’s still not a bad position to be in, assuming that you qualify for one of those roles,” he said. Separate data from Indeed’s Job Postings Index also shows a seasonal ramp-up that is noticeable around Labor Day and the weeks that follow, when employers begin preparing for the fourth quarter and the holiday season, bringing more demand for workers in areas including retail and transportation and warehousing.
Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, cautioned that the surge is not always dramatic. “It’s not typically a very large bump that we see in the job postings data,” he said. Still, September can be a good time to restart a job search because hiring managers and human resources employees take vacations during the summer, which can slow the interview process. September and October come after that summer slowdown but before the holidays begin making scheduling difficult again.
The timing depends heavily on the kind of job someone is looking for. Accounting is one particularly clear example. Stahle said employers begin ramping up postings in late summer as they prepare for year-end reporting and the coming tax season. Indeed’s data show accounting postings jumped roughly 21% from July to August last year. Other white-collar employers operate on a different timeline. Kantenga pointed to finance, accounting and other professional-services firms that recruit in September and October for workers who may not actually start until the following summer.
That lag is another reason more postings in September do not necessarily mean more people will start jobs in September. According to LinkedIn’s 2025 analysis, hiring and job transitions typically peak between July and September, fall sharply in December and rise again in January. Some of that January increase reflects workers who secured jobs during the final months of the previous year but delayed their start dates.
Even if September follows its usual seasonal pattern, job seekers are entering it in a difficult labor market. LinkedIn’s hiring rate rose just 2% from July to August, according to an analysis Kantenga published Friday following the latest jobs report. Hiring remains more than 20% below its pre-pandemic level, while the number of jobs available per applicant is 6% lower than it was a year ago. Stahle described the current labor market as roughly in line with, if not slightly weaker than, a year ago.
There were 7.3 million job openings in July, slightly more than the roughly 7.1 million openings a year earlier, but Stahle said employers are hiring at a slower pace and taking longer to extend offers to candidates. “So the jobs are kind of there, but employers [are] maybe not necessarily super eager to bring people in quickly,” he added. For workers who have already spent months searching, the slow pace is taking a toll. Kantenga said LinkedIn is seeing what he described as a “big crisis of confidence” among job seekers, particularly Gen Z, with some stopping their search or deciding to return to school.
