Big week in tal­ent acqui­si­tion tech, Job Board Doc­tor friends! The ques­tion is, where to start? Deel’s IPO prep, U.S. job num­bers, JobMedic’s moves… or some­where else? Let’s dive in.

Economic News

United Kingdom

The UK econ­o­my remains on shaky ground. While wages are ris­ing, unem­ploy­ment ticked up slight­ly from 4.3% to 4.4%. Last week, The Bank of Eng­land cut inter­est rates by 0.25% as expect­ed, with anoth­er cut like­ly by June 2025. How­ev­er, it also halved the UK’s growth fore­cast for the rest of the year, cit­ing per­sis­tent infla­tion­ary pres­sures.

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United States

Jan­u­ary’s job num­bers fell short of expec­ta­tions, rais­ing con­cerns about hir­ing trends in ear­ly 2025.  The Con­sumer Con­fi­dence Index fell in Jan­u­ary as well with ongo­ing fears of ris­ing prices and the impact of mass depor­ta­tions pro­vid­ing a con­sis­tent nag­ging feel­ing in the brains of US con­sumers.

"Views of current labor market conditions fell for the first time since September, while assessments of business conditions weakened for the second month in a row," said Dana Peterson, the chief economist at the Conference Board. "Additionally, references to inflation and prices continue to dominate write-in responses."

🔗 Reuters US Con­sumer Con­fi­dence Jan­u­ary
🔗 Finan­cial Times – Trump’s Rec­i­p­ro­cal Tar­iff EO 

Econ­o­mist Steve Rat­tner explains the inter­sec­tions of infla­tion and con­sumer con­fi­dence with his glo­ri­ous charts in a way bet­ter than this doc­tor ever could. (Watch until about the 5 minute mark for the data and stop there to miss the pol­i­tics).

Thurs­day, Trump issued anoth­er far rang­ing Exec­u­tive Order on Thurs­day with a focus to fur­ther reframe US trade pol­i­cy with a 180 day review of all trad­ing part­ners with an eye to imple­ment rec­i­p­ro­cal tar­iffs to reduce trade deficits.

End­ing on a pos­i­tive note, Aspen Tech reports in their Feb­ru­ary Labor Mar­ket Trends Newslet­ter – As of the end of Jan­u­ary, the medi­an full-time salary stood at $60,320, reflect­ing a 7.41% YoY increase and a 0.52% MoM rise. Part-time wages also saw growth, reach­ing $18.25 per hour — up 3.28% YoY and 1.39% MoM  – Thanks, Lana!

Money Moves

Deel Prepares for IPO

HR uni­corn, employ­er of record (EOR) com­pa­ny, Deel is report­ed­ly gear­ing up for a 2026 IPO.
🔗 CNBC

HRTech Startup Zelt Raises €5.7M

In a press release, Zelt is aim­ing to “fix peo­ple oper­a­tions once and for all.” Every TA Tech vet­er­an is now groan­ing in uni­son, “If I had a nick­el for every…. “Thanks Zelt, we have been wait­ing on a PE guy and a social media prod­uct lead to come “fix it” for the rest of us.
🔗 EU Star­tups

Earnings  

DHI Group

• Clear­ance­Jobs rev­enue: $54.1M (⬆ 8% YoY)
• Dice rev­enue: $87.8M (⬇ 14% YoY)

iHire’s Toxic Workplace Study

• 75% of employ­ees report expe­ri­enc­ing a tox­ic work­place.
• Major con­trib­u­tors: poor lead­er­ship, mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and unfair treat­ment.

The most obvi­ous, yet obliv­i­ous data point?  82.7% of employ­ers believe their work­place is positive—highlighting a seri­ous dis­con­nect.
🔗 Full Report

iCIMS Research Hub

The Feb­ru­ary Update also echoed some cau­tious opti­mism for the labor mar­ket with an increase in Jan­u­ary activ­i­ty and a high focus on health­care sec­tor growth.
🔗  Feb­ru­ary Work­force Report

Indeed’s Q4 Market Updates

• Trans­porta­tion: Slow­ing, with stag­nant wages.
• Health­care: Demand remains strong.
• Retail: Job post­ings dip below pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els.
• Soft­ware: Hir­ing strug­gles con­tin­ue.

Acquisitions

Phenom Acquires EDGE 

Phe­nom, the AI-dri­ven HR tech firm, has acquired EDGE, a work­force intel­li­gence plat­form, expand­ing its capa­bil­i­ties in pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and glob­al tal­ent mobil­i­ty. This marks Phe­nom’s sixth acqui­si­tion.
🔗 More Details

Layoffs 

• Sales­force Lays Off 1,000 Employ­ees – Part of an AI-dri­ven restruc­tur­ing.
  🔗 Newsweek
• Just­works Lays Off 200  🔗 From their CEO

HEAD SCRATCHER

JobMedic Goes Offline

UK job board JobMedic has gone offline. Orig­i­nal­ly Staffnurse.com was acquired by Career­builder in 2014 and sold off to Kari­era SA when CB sold its inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tions in 2023.

No announce­ments have been forth­com­ing from JobMedic regard­ing ces­sa­tion of ser­vices. Thanks to Matt Far­rah (Nurses.co.uk) for the tea!

BlackRock Buys then Cuts ZipRecruiter Stake

In anoth­er head scratch­er last week, Black­Rock sold near­ly half it’s shares (over 4MM) in ZIP at $6.88 per share. This sell fol­lows a end of year pur­chase of more than 1 mil­lion ZIP shares at $7.24 per share. Odd­ly enough, Zip stock closed at $7.73 as of this writ­ing.

That math is def­i­nite­ly has def­i­nite­ly got me scratch­ing my head.

🔗 Guru­Fo­cus – Black­Rock Buys ZIP
🔗 Guru­Fo­cus – Black­Rock Reduces ZIP Stake

Reality Check

🚨 With a (most­ly) com­plete fed­er­al hir­ing freeze and con­tin­ued issues with non-prof­its receiv­ing gov­ern­ment pay­ments, how are job board lead­ers serv­ing these sec­tors adjust­ing?

Are you feel­ing the squeeze, or am I off base? Tell me here, and I’ll share your thoughts next week—with your per­mis­sion, of course! 😊

Big thanks to every­one who reached out about last week’s real­i­ty check! I heard val­i­da­tion, con­cerns, and even some reports that things are going well. Right or wrong, I love hear­ing from you all.

Until next week,
The Doc

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