My 2025 was dominated by the tough decision to leave my job with the federal government in February. After signing the paperwork and moving on, I began thinking about what was next.
I enjoyed some time off and dipped my toes back into the job market. I took occasional recruiter calls and experimented with freelance writing while spending time in Mexico City and Rio.
Suddenly, headlines about a softening job market began to stack up. A year later, many of those same concerns still dominate the conversation. As coverage of layoffs, hiring freezes, and longer job searches became more common, I put my foot on the accelerator.
I now work as a compensation analyst in the tech sector, but I had to expand my search to find this job.
The job search proved to be more difficult than I expected
Previous job searches had taught me the importance of patience and resilience. It’s a numbers game. Leverage your network. The right opportunity is out there. I appreciated those general truths going in.
When I encountered the familiar dance of recruiters who seemed enthusiastic and then went silent, I was prepared for it. Even an especially eye-roll-worthy sequence with an exciting tech company didn’t throw me off: an interview scheduled and canceled at the last minute, a later request to reschedule, a coding assignment completed, and then no response.
What proved far more difficult was the uncertainty behind it all. I couldn’t tell which signals mattered. Was the job market softening because of tariffs? Because of AI? Were we heading toward a recession? Was white-collar work itself undergoing a more permanent shift? Was a referral the only way to get a job? I wasn’t sure what information to anchor to.
It became clear I had to expand my search
Living in New York City at the time, I knew I was in a competitive job market, but I also assumed it was abundant. Even if there were millions of job seekers in New York, I thought there would be millions of jobs to match them. I began to wonder whether that assumption actually held.
The idea that I would find my next role in New York had been a fundamental part of my decision to leave the government in the first place, but over time, the signals I saw began to complicate that picture.
I read an article that said New York City hadn’t added any new jobs in the first half of the year. Having just left a role analyzing job gains and losses across the country, I was aware of how uneven labor markets could be.
I also found myself thinking about my parents and how often they had moved for work. First from Nigeria, and then multiple times within the US, they had never anchored their decisions to a single city. They went where opportunity was. City preference came second.
I still had no desire to leave New York. I loved the city, but as my buyout runway shortened, I needed a new approach.
It was time to run a labor market experiment.
I started slowly — then all at once
At first, my expansion was modest. I looked at Philadelphia, where rent was cheaper, and Chicago, which seemed like New York lite.
The responses began to pick up. What started as a regional adjustment quickly became a national search. The Sun Belt felt abundant. Interview invites began to come from companies in Phoenix, Houston, and Nashville.
Momentum was building. Geography was no longer a limiting factor. I continued applying in New York, but the priority had shifted. I wasn’t optimizing for location anymore. I was optimizing for the best opportunity.
My new role came from an unexpected market
I hadn’t initially included Washington, D.C., in my expanded search because I knew firsthand how many federal employees were newly seeking work.
What I didn’t fully appreciate was how much the D.C. job market had evolved over the years. D.C. wasn’t just a government town anymore; it was home to a rapidly growing concentration of banking and technology jobs, both within the city and in Northern Virginia.
After weighing several cities, recruiter conversations, and potential paths forward, I accepted a new role as a compensation analyst at a tech company in Northern Virginia, which was a lateral move for me.
After years of analyzing jobs and wages across industries and regions for the federal government, I would now be applying that lens inside a single organization, focused more narrowly on how compensation decisions play out in practice within a fast-moving, technology-driven business. The search was officially over.
As I packed my bags for D.C., recent graduates were on my mind
Many of the articles I’d read about the job market focused on how difficult things had become for new college graduates. Having just gone through a challenging search myself, I could appreciate that reality.
What stood out to me was how central geographic mobility had been to my own outcome, even with several years of experience at a well-respected government agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to lean on.
Moving isn’t an option for everyone, and I resisted it at first, but it struck me as a lever that younger workers could consider. Data shows people move far less frequently than they once did, even as opportunities have spread across more regional labor markets. Historically, going where opportunity is has been one of the most reliable ways to create a new path forward, and it turned out to be the key to my search.
I started my new role at the end of 2025 and began settling into my new life
I live in D.C. and commute to Northern Virginia. I found the cost-of-living adjustment relatively manageable compared with New York. Citywide salaries are only modestly lower, while rents are noticeably lower, and the rental market feels much more favorable to tenants. Finding an apartment was relatively easy for me.
The past year was defined by transition; the next will be about building. I plan to spend most of 2026 getting settled into my new job and life in D.C.
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