I'm in the US and the situation is similar here. I've never had an issue finding a job before either, but I've been unemployed since the middle of 2023.
Assuming you aren't under financial hardship, my advice is to spend more time on your hobbies and check back in around July/August. That is when the layoffs are projected to drop and hiring is expected to keep up.
Every time I bring up this uneasy feeling of everything feeling like it's going to crumble soon, I get employment data hurtled at me and the stock market thrown in my face.
Maybe Canada is worse due to how insane housing is but for the average person life does not feel anywhere like it used to pre pandemic at least.
Numbers are very easy to manipulate, and are almost never predictive when removed from the original context.
Low unemployment means nothing without also referencing workforce participation rates. Economic data is also effectively useless if, for example, inflation data excludes common expenses like groceries, housing, used cars, etc.
I don't think this was always the case, but economic data today is so easily gamed that its little more than political theater.
Basically, USA probably has much more new graduates of CS a year than net jobs in tech added last year. Many would say it's like a statistical error; anyway, it's a low number.
40% of the US population is inactive. Unemployment rate has been made useless, I don't think any software developer contributes to it. The rate now is more about desperate people in critical situation than people who didn't find a job.
Interviewing.io compared public data to their internal data and make a compelling argument for hiring to pick up in Q2 [0], though I don't know if the recent spate of 2024 layoffs change this calculus.
Jan layoffs are "normal" (cant lay off people in holidays and new financial planning for new year) and tech isnt particularly affected (city group laid off 20k people, mostly finance), whereas most tech layoffs were in the hundreds by company and were in Companies who didnt make a profit (Twitch and Unity after their controversy)
So i believe that things are getting better as data showed December '23 being the best month of 23 for tech job growth.
the "perfectly rational markets" expect the central banks to lower interest rates. which actually assumes that something economically worse happens in the meantime because as it is now, the fed is _not_ lowering.
I have zero faith that it is going to pick up again. There is no evidence this is going to be the case. Your time would be better spent retraining for another industry, if that is practical for you.
The economy is absolute garbage right now.
I'm in the US and the situation is similar here. I've never had an issue finding a job before either, but I've been unemployed since the middle of 2023.
Assuming you aren't under financial hardship, my advice is to spend more time on your hobbies and check back in around July/August. That is when the layoffs are projected to drop and hiring is expected to keep up.