Job Openings Plummeted Months Ahead of Fisker Bankruptcy

It’s worth restating the LinkUp case in a nutshell:

Every company in your portfolio has employees. Companies doing well hire more employees, while those experiencing distress hire fewer. When you know the kind of employees a company is hiring for, you have a privileged view into their internal strategy and growth position.

The recent bankruptcy of EV maker Fisker was prefigured in their hiring from the end of last year, beginning with a sheer cliff of removed jobs in December.

By March, our solutions manager Nic was tweeting about a hiring slash at smaller EV firms including Rivian and Lucid, and noting a particularly dramatic fall at Fisker to just 40 active jobs. At that point, they were funneling hiring efforts into sales leadership.

On April 9, Nic tweeted that active listings at Fisker were down to a single entry: for an auditor. It’s a blaring signal of distress from a company that was listing over 400 active jobs just 5 months prior.

Looking at occupational hiring trends at the boutique automaker, we see a significant uptick in openings for accountants and auditors from the start of 2023. Though not conclusive, this trend is often an indicator of financial stress.

Alternative labor demand data is a sharp barometer of many growth and distress signals, but can be an especially pointed predictor of looming bankruptcy. This LSEG white paper on the 2020 bankruptcy of Hertz leverages Refnitiv analysis of LinkUp data on the car rental to show a fall in active listings was a leading indicator of bankruptcy, preceding estimated revenue declines by several weeks. (Active listings in Green; Revenue estimates in yellow and purple).

Keep ahead of the company curve and distress signals with LinkUp Compass: it’s the job market, now in living color. And stay tuned for more of our Notes from The Evidence Lab, where we showcase the engaging interface and unmatched granularity of our job market dataset.

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