If Dice is reporting a 45% drop in postings, then the actual drop in available jobs might be even much steeper. At least in the Cleveland market, headhunters are all sniffing around for any scrap they can find. While it used to be that every job would have 4-ish headhunters advertising for it, that number is now somewhere around ten. Note that my rough analysis is based on the commonality of obscure phrases or skill sets ("Python is a Big Plus"). I don't mean that Python is obscure, but that unique wording shared among postings (especially in Cleveland) lets me know that it's probably the same job with a headhunter doing a cut & paste into his own description. That companies are adopting standardized vendor managements systems where job requirements are presented to all qualified (gone through proper procedure) headhunters only adds to the redundancy. It used to be that a hiring manager would simply call up his favorites and circumvent the other eighteen firms who have an established contract with the company.