Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, September 4, 2026
Job openings have seen a significant year-over-year decrease of 13% across all education levels, with the exception of the construction sector, which has experienced a 10% increase in openings. This trend highlights a divergence between skilled trades, where openings are up, and white-collar professions, where they are down. Experts suggest this shift may lead more young people towards skilled trades due to greater opportunity and potentially higher earning potential.
“Jobs across all education levels are down negative 13%. year over year. That's the way my audience feels. Yeah.”
“Job openings are down everywhere, except in construction. Construction is the one outlier job openings. There are up about 10% year over year. And I think that aligns with what we saw in the jobs report today. These are all about AI data center construction. The manufacturing jobs are all around machinery.”
“Skilled trade openings are up more than 5% year over year, whereas white collar job openings are down about 3%.”