Can Your LinkedIn Inbox Predict the Job Market?

Hi there! Recently I noticed that I was receiving more LinkedIn messages than usual. Have you also been receiving more messages from recruiters on LinkedIn recently, or is it just me? Is the tech job market heating up again? To answer this question, I tracked every recruiter message since 2020. Here's the number of messages I received each month. Number of messages received on LinkedIn from January 2020 to February 2026. I started working in September 2019, so this dataset covers my career from 5 months of experience to more than 6 years. In total, it contains 544 recruiter messages over 6 years. A few things stand out. There is a peak around mid-2022, which matches the hiring boom across the tech industry, followed by the crash in 2023. In December 2023 I moved from Portugal to Belgium, which might explain the drop in messages in the following months. In the last month we also observe an uptick in the number of messages compared with the previous months. Can the number of LinkedIn mes