Something terrible seems to be happening to the Chinese job market

Quanton Data

The chart shows January job postings versus the same period a year earlier.

Quanton Data, a firm that focuses on structuring big data, has put together a database of job postings from over a hundred different job boards serving China.

Erik Haines, founder and chief executive of Quanton, sent Business Insider a snippet of a recent report, and its findings should set alarm bells ringing.

In short, job postings by Chinese companies started dropping dramatically from November onward, according to Quanton.

Haines told Business Insider:

The big picture is that both the number of large companies (1,000+ employees) that are posting and the overall number of postings by large companies significantly decreased across almost all sectors starting in November '15. Very telling as these companies manage their inventory.

Business Insider reported on Quanton data published in October, which showed that manufacturing jobs in China in the that sector were drying up. In January, China factory activity hit a three-year low.

Now it seems that job postings are declining across almost every sector.