Was there over hiring during Covid?

1. The obvious first answer: “It depends on the sector and timing”

Early in 2020 many firms sharply cut hiring and job postings as lockdowns and demand drops hit — BLS and academic analyses documented deep declines in job openings and hiring in the Mar–Apr 2020 window ^{[1] [5]}. At the same time large firms in essential retail, warehousing and health ran massive hiring drives (CVS announced plans for 50,000 hires; Amazon hired more than 175,000) to meet pandemic demand, so employers both laid off and hired aggressively depending on business lines ^[2].

2. Evidence that some firms “over‑hired” during/after the pandemic

Multiple recent articles framing 2024–25 labour trends say firms expanded headcount quickly during the pandemic and immediate recovery years — a hiring boom that created harder-to-sustain staffing levels — and that later retrenchment is in part a correction to that expansion ^{[4] [6] [3]}. Reuters and Challenger data note that layoffs in 2025 have been high and that some industries are “correcting after the hiring boom of the pandemic” ^[7].

3. But not everyone frames it as “over‑hiring” — alternative explanations exist

Several reports emphasize other drivers of later hiring slowdowns and cuts: rising costs, AI and productivity shifts, weak consumer demand and policy uncertainty are all cited as proximate causes for slower hiring and layoffs in 2025 ^{[7] [8] [9]}. News outlets covering the 2025 labor market also point to a “low‑hire, low‑fire” dynamic where employers are reluctant to add headcount even if they previously expanded rapidly, so the current pause may reflect caution as much as prior excess ^{[10] [11]}.

4. Data limitations and measurement quirks to consider

Big shifts in hires vs openings can reflect measurement issues: JOLTS and CES/JOLTS alignment were modified in April 2020 to account for pandemic disruption, and later BLS revisions (e.g., a 2025 revision that subtracted 911,000 jobs from prior estimates) show the official series can change meaningfully as data are re‑benchmarked ^{[5] [3]}. Journalists warn the “openings vs hires” gap and “ghost job” postings complicate simple claims about whether firms really over‑hired ^[12].

5. What the scholarly and policy research says about firm behaviour

Academic analyses of corporate job postings find that job postings and new hiring fell sharply in Mar–Sept 2020 relative to prior years, and that firms in more exposed industries cut back hiring disproportionately — evidence consistent with a pattern of selective hiring and retrenchment rather than uniform over‑hiring across the economy ^[1]. The World Bank and country surveys similarly document sectoral contractions and regional variations in job losses during 2020 ^[13].

6. The longer arc: boom, bottleneck, and a “hangover” narrative

Contemporary coverage of 2024–25 frames recent weakness as partly a hangover from the extremely strong post‑lockdown hiring (creating mismatch and later slower growth in hires), producing a labour market that now looks “frozen” in places — fewer hires even when openings exist — and prompting companies to be cautious about rehiring ^{[3] [11] [6]}. Challenger and industry reports explicitly link some 2025 retrenchments to corrections after pandemic expansion ^{[8] [7]}.

7. Bottom line for readers

Available sources do not sustain a single blanket claim that “there was over‑hiring across the economy during COVID”; instead reporting and research show a mixed picture: massive, rapid hiring in some sectors and months (health, retail, warehousing) alongside abrupt cuts and dramatic falls in job postings in others ^{[2] [1]}. Later slow hiring and large 2025 layoffs are widely described as partly a correction to the pandemic‑era boom, but alternative explanations (AI, cost cutting, policy uncertainty) also appear in the sources and remain relevant ^{[4] [7] [9]}.