The Job Market April 2010 From Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
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Posts tagged ‘Jeff Altman’
The Job Market: October, 2009
For those of you who have been reading my ezine or my articles for TheJobMarketBlog.com, you know I became very pessimistic about the job market in August, 2007, the day that we all first heard the term, “subprime mortgage.”
In March of this year, I wrote that I had seen the first signs of the end of the labor recession with a few primitive signals.
I can now state with certainty that in most professional skill areas, the slowdown is over and hiring is back.It is certainly not back to the levels or the salary offers of the boom years. Firms are still extending offers for salary cuts, laterals or extremely modest raises because choices, in their mind are few and far in between.
Since June, firms have been interviewing again for lots of jobs in professional skill areas like IT, accounting, engineering, finance.
Hiring for jobs like these had ground to a halt last year as firms weighed and implemented staff cuts. In contrast. healthcare hiring never slowed and was the one strong area of professional hiring throughout.
But if you listen to the pundits on tv or read statistics, little has changed. This is because blue collar and no collar jobs continue to be cut.
In my opinion, this has nothing to do with the stimulus program except how it prevented state and local government from cutting even more jobs and the illusion that the government was going to do something. After all, only between 10 and 20% of stimulus money has been spent.
Now, I’m a “boots on the ground” guy who writes from the perspective of observations and comments from people. Among the things I have noticed are:
1) Unlike last year when there was no interviewing occurring, interviewing is now commonplace.
2) People are receiving job offers, although they are not financially rewarding offers. Unlike the early signals when offers were only being extended for people with obscure skills, now “common skills” have come back in to demand.
3. People are starting to receive multiple job offers (That was a real shocker)
4. There is a push on among employers for “try buy” or contract to hire job offers in order to mitigate their risk, particularly with job applicants who are not working.
It will take time for all the unemployed to be re-absorbed by the system. Until then, wages will remain compacted around certain price points.
© 2009, Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter all rights reserved