Don't panic just yet, but Apple ($AAPL) hiring has slowed for the first time in a while.

On January 1, 2019, Apple had 4,903 jobs listed online. As of Friday, it listed 4,008 openings. That's a drop of 18% since the new year.

A slight drop in hiring isn't necessarily a bad thing. In many cases, this means that newly created teams are finally in place and a company is slowly its hiring process as it pushes forward. It also can mean that a company — Apple in this case — is simply shoring up spending on new talent as it looks to maximize profits. And, to be fair to Apple, the company is still looking to hire more than 4,000 people.

That all said, this does mark the first time the company has reduced the number of open positions since last summer.

The reduction is possibly linked to our recent finding that, for the first time, Apple is hiring more software engineers than hardware engineers for the first time since at least 2016. That said, Apple's Software and Services category saw the largest drop in openings at 287. Other slowdowns in hiring included Apple's Corporate Functions (251 openings), Marketing (113 openings), and Support and Services (103 openings).

Brand

1/1/2019

3/9/2019

Change

% Change

Corporate Functions

405

154

-251

-62.0%

Support and Service

239

136

-103

-43.1%

Marketing

299

186

-113

-37.8%

Not Available

180

120

-60

-33.3%

Operations and Supply Chain

335

252

-83

-24.8%

Design

44

36

-8

-18.2%

Software and Services

1590

1303

-287

-18.1%

Hardware

1130

1066

-64

-5.7%

Sales and Business Development

273

278

5

1.8%

Apple Retail

376

413

37

9.8%

Students

17

63

46

270.6%

However, based on percentage change differences, the hardest-hit division appears to be Corporate Functions, which has seen a 62% new-positions hiring slowdown since the new year. Support and Service comes in second with a 43.1% drop, followed by Marketing at 37.8%.

The Corporate Functions at Apple handle many tasks, from HR to Real Estate and Development. It's possible that now that Apple has its new futuristic headquarters in place and a new campus in Austin underway, it's slowed its hiring for those support teams.

Location Text

1/1/2019

3/9/2019

Change

% Change

Santa Clara Valley (Cupertino)

2615

2011

-604

-23.1%

Austin

277

183

-94

-33.9%

Singapore

167

111

-56

-33.5%

Shanghai

173

136

-37

-21.4%

Cork

87

65

-22

-25.3%

Hyderabad

60

42

-18

-30.0%

Nanshan

22

7

-15

-68.2%

Sacramento

30

16

-14

-46.7%

Tokyo

60

46

-14

-23.3%

Sydney

30

17

-13

-43.3%

Uxbridge

18

8

-10

-55.6%

Shenzhen

26

20

-6

-23.1%

San Francisco

28

22

-6

-21.4%

Bengaluru

10

6

-4

-40.0%

Taipei

13

9

-4

-30.8%

Paris

20

16

-4

-20.0%

Cambridge

14

11

-3

-21.4%

Hong Kong

17

14

-3

-17.6%

Kanagawa

29

26

-3

-10.3%

Mexico City

10

8

-2

-20.0%

Hiring slowdowns, however, appear to be across the board when it comes to locations, with Apple's Santa Clara Valley headquarters and aforementioned Austin facility seeing the largest reductions in openings at 604 and 94 fewer openings, respectively.

Ad placeholder