From Foxnews.com – Economy Shrugs Off Weak Housing and Automotive Sectors As Employers Add 167,000 Jobs in December. We are encountering extended sourcing cycles right now due in no small part to compensation increases.
Employers stepped up hiring last month, boosting payrolls by a brisk 167,000 and keeping the unemployment rate steady at a still historically low 4.5 percent. Workers’ wages grew briskly.
The latest snapshot of the nation’s employment climate, released Friday by the Labor Department, showed that the jobs market ended 2006 on a strong note and provided fresh evidence that the troubled housing and automotive sectors aren’t dragging down employment across the country.
We have implemented numerous behind-the-scenes updates (technology, resource investment) to better attack the tight market. I posted earlier this week about a statistic from CareerBuilder regarding a 60% bump in job searches they encountered last January. This is a good time to be sourcing since many people use their vacation time around the holidays and then actively pursue a new opportunity after Jan. 1.