Hi Reader,

I’ve been reporting on the global Product Management job market for 12 months now. The insights have reached hundreds of thousands of people in tech around the world. While I started this as research for a webinar I did with Userpilot last year, my mission has always been to inform Product Managers on trends in the market so they can make informed career decisions.

Today, I want to go a level deeper for all of you.

It’s no secret there has been a reckoning in the tech job market, lasting for over 2.5 years now. It began with massive tech layoffs in Q3 2022. During this time, over 600k employees have been laid off, and Product Managers were 2.56 times more likely to be affected by layoffs than their Engineering counterparts.

The number of Product Managers looking for work is likely an order of magnitude larger than the relatively small number of Product Manager job listings.

According to LinkedIn, over 2.6MM people list themselves as a Product Manager. Yet, the number of open roles over the past year has fluctuated between 20-26K, landing at around 23K as of April 2025. That figure is essentially flat compared to six months ago, but it’s down 12% compared to May of 2024—a sign that the hiring market isn’t hotter than a year ago, but not substantially lower, either.

Here’s what the last 1-year looks like:

We’re nearing the first year-over-year comp, but I’m not expecting 14% MoM growth to surpass the volume of PM job listings in May 2024, though a consecutive month of PM job listings growth would be welcomed—this has only happened once in the last twelve months, when January and February grew.

Jobs by level

In October, I began tracking the data by level (PM, Senior PM, and Product Leadership). This gave an interesting lens to compare against. Now, the rise of the “Super IC” is a concept I have different thoughts about to be shared in a future newsletter, but it’s clear that Individual Contributor roles are the bulk. What’s more interesting is the tightening of the number of Senior PM roles to start 2025. At the global level, Leadership roles as a share of total look relatively flat, but this does vary by region.

Work environment

Lastly, there is (still) debate about on-site, hybrid, and remote. My former employer has gotten deserved heat as they required employees to work 100% on-site. In fact, the resurgence of Amazon Product Manager roles (over 700 in April alone, 3% of all PM jobs worldwide) accounts for some of the global shifts seen in the chart below.

With nearly a year of data on this, and being about 2 years post-COVID, there are no signs that PM jobs are headed for pre-pandemic on-site levels.

“X” Product Managers

Lastly, I want to touch on specialised product titles — particularly AI Product Manager and Growth Product Manager. Despite the hype, these roles still account for only a tiny fraction of the job market.

Over the last three months, there have been roughly 150 “AI Product Manager” job listings with some variation of that title, and ~125 for “Growth Product Manager”. This is dwarfed by the number of “Technical Product Managers” which ranges between 1,400-1,600.

Don’t rush to update your Resume or CV on this one.

And that’s it for today’s deep dive!

If you found these helpful, leave a like, comment, or reshare on LinkedIn or forward this email to folks in your network.

If you have any questions on the above, just reply and I will get back to you!

Wishing you success,
James