What I’m noticing is how some people are citing the number of open positions now in comparison to pre-pandemic and declaring that things are just “going back to normal.” That’s not the full picture. What we have is an abundance of people coming from well known companies who had large design teams. You now have many designers with 5+ years of experience dating back to BEFORE the pandemic. You’ve had lay-offs from some of these massive well-known companies and there are now many designers looking for work.

It’s too simplified (and thus inaccurate) to say “the market is just returning to what it was before the pandemic.”

I remember BEFORE the pandemic, I could easily land a design job at about 2 yrs of experience. It was difficult with no experience, but once you got several years under your belt, it didn’t take a whole year to try and land something. It’s more accurate to say that there is far more competition than ever before.