Word had gotten around about the questions I was asking, and an omerta was in effect.

In 2016, Variety reported that more than half of the traffic Vice claimed as its own on Comscore came from “the digital equivalent of mortgage-backed securities”: The company had struck deals with a number of spam-y websites like OMGFacts and Distractify — along with The Awl and Modern Farmer — that allowed Vice to count their traffic as its own in exchange for selling ads on their behalf.

The big picture is stark. Hiring intentions this year are off by almost half compared with 2017, driven by a collapse in the demand for workers in Information Technology, Entertainment & Leisure, Telecommunications and Retail. What little demand there is can be seen in some of the industries that have the smallest pools of available workers such as Construction, Energy and Electronics.