Last week, we reported that January’s MoM and YoY opened search volume trends were stronger than January 2023’s, a promising sign for the market. This week, more positive news: January 2024 also outpaced January 2023 on a MoM and YoY basis as it related to closed searches.

While closed search data is more of a lagging market indicator than a leading market indicator, it still serves as a good check on the market overall.

In our look ahead at 2024, we suggested that the year might be best characterized as “The Great Repricing,” where macro conditions settled into historical norms territory, everyone (perhaps with the exception of AI) accepted the repriced market, and things started moving again. If that happened, you could surmise, the trickle down to executive talent would be felt in everything from function-level trends to compensation adjustments.

The first two signs via market activity are an indication that things are, indeed, moving a bit more. As we enter the quarter’s final month, we’ll begin looking at the remainder of the data to understand whether those more talent-specific changes would be felt, too.