RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK — Job openings in the Triangle’s startup job market fell again this week, according to the latest edition of the WRAL TechWire Jobs Report. Looking at 15 different local or regional job board sites for “startup” jobs, WRAL’s exclusive report showed only 8,657 postings (not accounting for duplications in postings), a loss of more than 800 job postings compared to last week.

This is also the first time since WRAL started tracking this data that startup job postings fell below 9,000.

Triangle Tweener Fund founder and Spiffy CEO Scot Wingo told TechWire that many startups are not considering hiring right now.

“We’re in this weird phase in ‘Startupland’ where we’re all watching the macro because that’s what’s driving our investor’s (VC) sentiment,” Wingo told me over email. “Most of that is bad news — the Fed is talking about persistently high interest rates, inflation seems to be creeping back up…”

AI is also a distraction, says Wingo—not just because AI is soaking up lots of capital (like Pryon, the Raleigh-based AI startup that recently landed $100M) but because VCs and startups are distracted by ideas for AI capabilities.

“Every VC is spending time on it, and that rolls downhill,” said Wingo. “‘Have you thought about AI to do X/Y/Z’ is where a lot of us are spending our time right now, viewing it as a great tool for increasing the productivity of the teams we already have.”

That potential for AI to do more—like increasing team productivity—also has startups pausing their hiring, says Wingo.

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But it’s not all bad headlines, the serial entrepreneur says.

“The green shoots I’m excited about are the IPO market,” said Wingo. “We had three companies get out relatively unscathed—ARM, Instacart and Klaviyo. Instacart is good for the Spiffy corner of the world, Klaviyo is great for software businesses. If we can see more of that in Q4, that will be a positive on the side of the scale that is mostly negatives right now.”

Looking at the Startup Trends—Numbers from the Sept. 25 jobs report

This week’s startup job posting numbers were 9.2% lower than this time last week and 60.7% lower than this time last year.

Here’s a look at the trend from the last 16 months:


Here are the numbers from all 15 different local or regional job board sites that we review weekly for WRAL TechWire’s exclusive Jobs Report for “startup” jobs:

Check back next week for an update on the WRAL TechWire jobs report.

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