February 25, 2009
There Are Still Open Positions
You never quite know what you are going to receive from the Herman Trend Alert which makes it one of the more highly-anticipated newsletters in my inbox. This week the topic is how many job postings there are presently – over 1.8 million. Granted, there is far more to hiring than just the quantitative aspect, but the number surprised me.
Here is their intro (sorry, no link):
While job postings between January 2008 and January 2009 have declined in all industries, there are still almost 1.88 million jobs that require skilled workers. According to a release by Indeed.com last week, the industries that experienced the least contraction were Education and Healthcare. Job postings in these industries declined by nine and eight percent respectively.
And the bad:
Looking at job seeker trends in 12 major industries, Indeed.com’s assessment reflects major losses in the numbers of postings in most of the major industries. Not surprisingly, the greatest losses were in Real Estate (58 percent) with Accounting second at 53 percent. The numbers of postings in the other major industries Construction, Banking and Finance, Hospitality, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Media and Newspapers, Retail, and Transportation all dropped by between 43 and 48 percent.
The last point they make is indicative of the change towards information-based positions in this country:
The other side of this picture, often overlooked except by employers in need, is the demand for skilled workers. In fact the numbers of postings in this report totals to over 1.87 million. The recently unemployed will fill some of those jobs. However, others will continue to be vacant because we simply do not have the trained workers to fill them— even with a national unemployment rate of 7.6. Employers would do well to take this opportunity to reinforce their pipelines, through the schools or colleges.
That is sound advice. I find it difficult to believe that in this economy there are still positions that will go unfilled due to a lack of qualified candidates. If you are looking for a new opportunity, these vacancies would be a good place to start analyzing your skill set to their need.
