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Sales Leadership

29,000 Jobs Added and Still No Great Reps

October 12, 2026 Chris Stinson, The Kas Group
Short answer: A soft jobs report does not make sales hiring easy. September added only 29,000 jobs and unemployment rose to 4.2%, so founders expect a buyer's market. What gets easier is collecting resumes that do not match the job. Strong reps are mostly staying put, and moving one takes a reason that fires them up.

How to read this post: paragraphs under a "My view" label are what I see in live sales searches at The Kas Group. Everything else comes from a named source, linked in the text and listed at the end. SignalHire and Herizon publish their own platform or sample data. I label those figures as directional.

Every soft jobs report brings the same founder question. If the market is weak, should sales hiring be easier now? The September numbers are soft. The answer for sales is still no. Here is what the report says, what the sales data adds, and what I see in searches.

What the September Report Says

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on October 2 that employers added 29,000 jobs in September, per Fox Business. Economists polled by LSEG expected 90,000. Unemployment rose to 4.2%. July and August were revised down by a combined 60,000.

The Joint Economic Committee summary of the BLS data breaks it down. Private payrolls rose 46,000. Government fell 17,000. Over the past year, the information sector, which includes tech, lost 120,000 jobs. KPMG called the September gain "dismal" and noted the information sector shed 10,000 jobs in the month.

The line that matters most for hiring came from Vanguard senior economist Adam Schickling, quoted by Fox Business: "The underlying story is still a low-hire, low-fire labor market." He also said layoffs remain remarkably low.

Read that slowly. Low hire means companies are adding few people. Low fire means few people are being pushed out. The reps who are good at their jobs mostly still have them.

What the Sales Data Adds

The BLS does not break out sales reps by role. Two outside sources give a rough read. Both use their own data, so treat them as directional.

  • SignalHire (vendor, internal search data). In a September 14 report updated October 6, SignalHire says US searches for sales roles on its platform fell 26.7% from 2025 to 2026. Sales Development and Lead Generation was the exception in the US, up 67.0%. Globally, Sales Leadership and Commercial Strategy searches rose 107.0%.
  • Herizon (global posting sample, written for a Finland audience). Its October 5 report covers about 60,000 global postings. Startup postings rose 90% month over month to 6,831. Sales as a skill fell from 69.9 to 55.8 mentions per 1,000 postings, and Account Executive postings fell from 2,566 to 2,293.

Put those next to the BLS numbers and you get a split picture. Overall hiring is slow. Startups are still opening seats. Demand is moving toward SDRs and sales leaders. None of that says great reps are easy to find.

My View: More Resumes, Fewer Fits

Founders do think a soft market makes sales hiring easier. The logic sounds right. More people out of work should mean more good people to choose from.

What actually gets easier is getting resumes that do not match the job. You also see more reps who look fine on paper and do not produce. Post an AE role in a soft month and the inbox fills up. Then you start reading, and the stack is mostly the wrong segment, the wrong motion, or a track record that does not hold up on a call.

Volume feels like progress. It is not the same as a shortlist. A pile of applicants still has to be sorted, and someone has to do it.

My View: The Reps You Want Are Staying Put

A lot of reps are staying where they are right now. That matches the low hire, low fire read. If you are hitting your number and your company is stable, a weak market gives you a reason to stay.

To get one of those reps to move, the job has to fire them up. Two things do the most work. First, a clear roadmap for growth: where this seat goes in a year or two, and what the rep has to do to get there. Second, an established playbook for bringing in new business. A producing rep wants to see a real motion behind the job before they leave one that works.

If you cannot describe both, the strong rep will hear the pitch and stay put. The people who say yes will be the ones with less to lose.

What to Do Before You Post the Role

Write down the growth path for the seat. Write down how new business comes in today, who owns outbound, and what the first 90 days look like. If the playbook only lives in your head, start with Your First Sales Hire Needs a Playbook.

Then make sure the package clears the market. What to Pay Your First AE covers OTE bands by segment. If you are weighing an SDR against AI outreach tools, read Salesforce Just Shipped an AI SDR. Here's Who You Still Need.

Finally, plan to go find people instead of waiting for them. The reps you want are not applying. That is the case for fractional recruiting, where a recruiter works inside your search and reaches out to people who are not looking. The three ways The Kas Group works, Kas Seat, Kas Milestone Search and Kas Directed Pursuit, are on the programs page.

Hiring reps in a slow market?

Email me the seat, your stage and how new business comes in today. You get a straight read on what it will take to move a rep who is producing.

Email [email protected]

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a soft jobs market make it easier to hire sales reps?

In my view, no. A soft market makes it easier to collect resumes. It does not make it easier to find reps who produce. Many strong reps are staying where they are, so the people applying are often a poor match for the job.

How many jobs did the US add in September 2026?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 29,000 jobs added in September 2026, below the 90,000 economists expected in an LSEG poll. Unemployment rose to 4.2%, and July and August were revised down by a combined 60,000.

What does low hire, low fire mean for sales hiring?

Vanguard's Adam Schickling used the phrase for September: hiring is subdued and layoffs remain low. For sales, that means fewer strong reps are being pushed onto the market. The ones you want mostly still have jobs.

What gets a top sales rep to change jobs right now?

In my view, it has to be something that fires the rep up. That means a clear roadmap for growth and an established playbook for bringing in new business. A rep who is producing will not move for a vague pitch.

Are companies still hiring SDRs in 2026?

SignalHire's own platform data shows US sales role searches down 26.7% year over year, with Sales Development and Lead Generation searches up 67.0% in the US. That is one vendor's internal search data, so treat it as directional.

Sources

Further reading: Your First Sales Hire Needs a Playbook · What to Pay Your First AE · Who You Still Need With an AI SDR · What Is Fractional Recruiting? · Programs