The Merker Report, Q2 2025 Edition, Published May 2025
Q2 2025: Market Insights Report
Released in May 2025, this edition tracked national, industry and geographic hiring trends during a spring when strong job numbers and slowdown worries were arriving in the same week.
Inside This Edition
- National Trends
- The headline labor market picture for the second quarter.
- Industry Trends
- Where job growth was concentrating and where it was cooling.
- Geographic Trends
- The metro markets with the most hiring momentum.
- Occupational And Workforce Data
- Job and wage movement by occupation, with workforce composition trends.
The Market Moment
Erin covered both sides of that tension on LinkedIn: The Job Numbers For March Were Impressive (April 2025), then Despite A Potential Slowdown In The Market (June 2025). A shorter LinkedIn edition of this report was also published for her network.
How To Use It
This is the edition to revisit if you are asking whether a soft patch in the market makes executive talent easier to land. The short answer it supports: some pools loosened, the best leaders did not, and timing a search around headlines rarely pays off.
Charts in the full report draw on licensed labor market data, including LaborIQ and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics series, curated and annotated by Erin Merker.