What December Hiring Signals Really Looked Like (And How to Use Them for January)

Most people treat December as a write-off for job search.

I used to think the same—until I started tracking hiring changes daily across my company list.

What I learned is simple:

December isn’t dead. It’s just uneven. And because it’s uneven, it creates signals that are easy to miss if you only look at job boards.

This post is a December recap (based on daily hiring momentum tracking), plus how I’m preparing for January.

The 3 biggest December patterns I noticed

1) Hiring wasn’t steady — it was “bursty”

Instead of smooth growth, I saw days with:

• high additions,
• sudden removals,
• and short windows where things moved fast.

This is exactly why weekly “momentum” is more useful than just counting open roles.

Figure: December movement shows spikes and slowdowns rather than a straight line.

2) “Churn” mattered more than raw volume

A big company can add a lot and remove a lot in the same window.

That creates a different reality than “hiring is up”:

• teams are backfilling,
• roles are being reposted,
• postings can disappear quickly.

So I started watching Added + Removed together, not just “Added.”

3) Many roles were short-lived

This is the most practical December lesson:

If roles close fast, your strategy must change.

For at least some companies in my tracking, the durability signal looked like:

• median open time measured in days (not weeks),
• a large fraction of roles closing within a week.

That implies:

• if you’re applying, you can’t “wait until weekend”
• if you’re networking, earlier is better (you want to be in the loop before the posting)

Figure: A company-level view combining daily adds/removes with role lifespan buckets.

Weekday effect: when jobs tend to appear (and disappear)

Once you track daily diffs, an uncomfortable truth shows up:

Hiring activity is not evenly distributed across the week.

So I started looking at:

• which weekdays had the highest additions,
• which had the highest removals,
• and how that changed during the holiday stretch.

Even a simple weekday heatmap makes timing visible.

Figure: Some weekdays are consistently more “active” than others.

Booming vs freezing: why December can be misleading

December is full of “false calm.”

A company can look stable because:

• it isn’t posting much,
• but it also isn’t removing much.

Another company can look active but be:

• removing a lot (freeze risk),
• or churning (reposts/backfill).

So I tracked a simple distribution:

• how many companies were booming vs freezing vs stable each day/week.

Figure: The market mood changes across December; stability can hide churn.

What I expect in January (and how I’m preparing)

This part is not a guarantee—just a plan based on how hiring usually behaves after holidays plus what December signals suggest.

Likely January dynamics

• Reactivations: paused roles reappear
• New focus areas: fresh headcount priorities show up
• More consistent cadence: fewer holiday-driven gaps
• Faster closing windows: early January can move quickly

My January prep checklist

1. Identify companies with late-December momentum (they may carry into January)
2. Prioritize companies where roles close fast → be ready to act within 48 hours
3. For slow-durability companies → prepare targeted networking and referrals
4. Use news only when it aligns with spikes/freezes (context, not distraction)

Why this matters

If you’re applying randomly, December feels quiet and discouraging.

If you watch momentum + durability + weekday patterns, December becomes useful:

• it shows which companies are gearing up,
• which ones are cleaning up,
• and where speed vs networking actually matters.

That’s the mindset I’m taking into January.

Project link (if you’re curious)

I built this tracker for myself and open-sourced it:

GitHub: Repo link Related blog post: Why I built this

Setup instructions are included in the repository.