Manpower Group: 10 toughest jobs to fill

The hardest jobs to fill globally are skilled trades workers, engineers and sales representatives, according to Manpower Group’s survey of nearly 40,000 employers across 41 countries and territories. Skilled trades and engineers have become harder to find since last year, as demand outstrips supply. Sales representatives’ continued presence in the top 10 is a result of companies continuing to seek out experienced sales people who can help drive revenue growth.

Jobs most in demand in 2012	Jobs most in demand in 2011
1. Skilled Trades Workers	1. Technicians
2. Engineers	2. Sales Representatives
3. Sales Representatives	3. Skilled Trades Workers
4. Technicians	4. Engineers
5. Drivers	5. Laborers
6. Laborers	6. Management/ Executives
7. IT Staff	7. Accounting & Finance Staff
8. Accounting & Finance Staff	8. IT Staff
9. Chefs/Cooks	9. Production Operators
10. Management/Executives	10. Secretaries, PAs, Admin Assistants, & Office Support Staff

Talent supply and demand issues are generally more acute in the Asia Pacific and the Americas region than in EMEA. Globally, employers having the most difficulty finding the right people to fill jobs are located in Japan (81%), Brazil (71%), Bulgaria (51%), Australia (50%), USA (49%), India (48%), New Zealand (48%), Taiwan (47%), Panama (47%), Romania (45%), Argentina (45%), Mexico (43%) and Germany (42%). Talent shortages are least problematic in Ireland and the Netherlands. The percentage of employers reporting difficulties has remained relatively consistent over time, however India has displayed volatility where the proportion dropped 19 percentage points since last year, but jumped 51 percentage points the year before that. The number of employers struggling to fill roles in France has jumped 9 percentage points whereas it has dropped 15 percentage points in Italy.

Americas
Regionally, employers in the Americas are having more trouble filling jobs than the global average, with 41% of employers reporting difficulty filling positions due to lack of available talent. This figure represents the highest proportion of employers reporting difficulty since the start of the global economic downturn in 2008, and a 4% increase over last year’s survey. Despite this, employers are less concerned about the impact talent shortages have on key stakeholders with more than half (58%) believing the talent shortage will have little or no impact, up from 38% in 2011.

For the first time in the survey’s seven year history, employers in the Americas report engineering roles as the most difficult to fill across the region, up from fourth last year. While the role does not top the list in any individual country, it ranks second in Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica and the United States. Employers in Brazil (71%), the USA (49%) and Panama (47%) are having the most difficulty finding staff. Year-over-year, employers report greater difficulty filling vacancies in seven of the 10 countries. The most common strategy implemented by employers in the Americas to address talent shortages is additional training and development for existing staff, up from 32% in 2011 to 37% this year, and considerably more than the global average of 25%.
View the whole report here.

PITTSBURGH MSA UNEMPLOYMENT DOWN TO 7.0%

HARRISBURG (DECEMBER 1) – In October, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) fell four-tenths of a percentage point to 7.0 percent, the second consecutive decline of four-tenths of a percentage point.

The local rate remained below Pennsylvania’s rate (8.1%) which fell two-tenths of a percentage point and the United States’ rate (9.0%) which was down one-tenth of a percentage point. Over the year, the Pittsburgh MSA’s unemployment rate was down nine-tenths of a percentage point, while Pennsylvania’s rate was down four-tenths of a percentage point, and the national rate fell seven-tenths of a percentage point over the same period.

Among the commonwealth’s 14 MSAs, the Pittsburgh MSA was ranked as the 5th lowest unemployment rate in October. Within the Pittsburgh MSA, Butler County (6.4%) had the lowest rate while Fayette County (8.7%) had the highest rate. Among Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, unemployment rates ranged from 5.3 percent in Centre County to 11.2 percent in Cameron County.

Seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs in the Pittsburgh MSA rose 8,400 in October to 1,149,600. October tied for the third largest employment increase on record. Statewide jobs also showed growth, up 13,800 to 5,690,900. Jobs in the Pittsburgh MSA were up 21,600 (1.9%) from October 2010, while Pennsylvania’s jobs rose 54,500 (1.0%) from last year’s level.

Monster Employment Index For Pittsburgh Reaches Record High Level For July!

The Monster Employment Index, which measures the number of job postings across a broad spectrum of job boards and compares that number to a base year of 2003, reached a record level for Pittsburgh at 169 for July.

Some of the strongest Pittsburgh employment categories include “Business and Financial Operations”, “Community and Social Services”, “Healthcare Support”, “Food Preparation and Serving”, “Building, Grounds Cleaning, Maintenance” and “Transportation and Material Moving.

Nationwide the Labor Department reported that 117,000 jobs were created in July with the prior two months estimates increased by a combined 54,000 jobs.

For a complete breakdown of both the local and national employment  indexes please click here.

U.S. added 117,000 jobs in July. Not huge but FAR better than many feared! Previous 2 months revised higher as well!

By Jeffry Bartash, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. added 117,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate fell slightly to 9.1%, the government said Friday, in a better-than-expected report that appeared to temporarily calm jittery financial markets.


The report will reduce fears that the U.S. is heading toward recession,” said Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics.
Yet while employers hired more workers than economists expected, the gain wasn’t big enough to put a dent in disappointing labor-market trends.

The jobless rate has stayed above 8% for 30 straight months, the longest stretch of high unemployment since the Great Depression in the 1930s. What’s more, the drop in the unemployment rate in July stemmed mainly from a decline in the labor force as discouraged job seekers stopped looking for work.

During times of rapid growth, the U.S. typically adds at least 200,000 jobs a month, but much larger increases would be required for months on end to yank the unemployment rate back down to pre-recession levels.

Read More Here

Where the Jobs Are: The Right Spots in the Recovery

From Time.com
By Bill Saporito 

Kent Niederhofer can't find enough mechanical engineers to work for him — in southeastern Michigan. You know, where Detroit is, with its 13.3% unemployment rate. Niederhofer is president of the American branch of Ricardo, an engineering consultancy that designs the power trains of some of the coolest stuff around: Bugatti sports cars, huge wind turbines and unmanned aerial vehicles. "We are doing rocket science every day," says Niederhofer. "It's just not on rockets." So Ricardo got a little desperate, renting a billboard to place a help-wanted ad that featured a picture of a sexy-looking sports car, the tagline "Why you became an engineer" and a Web address for job seekers. He calls it engineer porn.

General Electric is also trying to poach some Motown engineers to staff its expansion at Appliance Park, in Louisville, Ky., and three other locations where it is establishing "centers of excellence" in refrigeration technologies. The company is in the middle of a $1 billion investment in its appliance sector that will create 1,300 jobs at all levels over the next four years. GE has repatriated — insourced, if you will — a refrigerator-manufacturing line from South Korea (thanks in part to a new union deal and a weaker dollar that makes U.S. labor more competitive) even as it waits for the housing market to rebound enough to restore demand for fridges. "We think it's going to be a slow crawl back over the next several years, which, for us, is why we are investing now," says James Campbell, CEO of GE Appliances & Lighting.

A Turning Point, Maybe

Flexible, outwardly focused companies such as Ricardo, GE and Deloitte are the main force behind an optimistic and underplayed fact: last September, the U.S. economy finally stopped bleeding jobs. And now job creation may be at a crucial turning point. The ADP National Employment Report recorded a surprising 297,000-job jump in private-sector employment in December. Manufacturing activity is up, retail sales are strong, and overall GDP growth is on track to be a healthy 3% this year. Inflation is still muted, and stocks are on a roll. It all bodes well for the Obama Administration's efforts to mitigate the 9%-to-10% unemployment rate that has hung for 19 months like a deadweight around the neck of the economy, not to mention the national psyche.

The Great Recession didn't merely cause cyclical job losses. It created an unemployment chasm. More jobs were lost in the 2007-09 recession, which officially ended in June 2009, than in the previous four recessions combined, says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight. "It's a very deep hole that we are climbing out of. We lost something close to 8 million jobs. That's why it's going to take a long time — 2015 — to get to [an unemployment rate of] 6%." Indeed, the rate could even rise again, as people who left the labor pool — and thus don't count as unemployed — start to look for work again.

That 6% figure refers to what economists call full employment, meaning that people who want to work can find it (give or take time lost to layoffs or telling the boss to shove it). Knocking any kind of dent in the current jobless rate is going to require the net addition of at least 135,000 jobs month after month.

That's not happening — yet. But economists are revising their GDP growth projections upward, and if the conventional wisdom holds, that has to result in stronger job creation at some point quite soon. (Employment growth tends to follow GDP growth with a lag.) Companies are already sitting on mountains of cash because they increased productivity through layoffs and other efficiencies. They have the money to hire, but they need to see increasing sales to justify it. There's some evidence that consumers are finally opening their wallets. Christmas sales were strong. Given the stimulus coursing through the economy from the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing, the tax-cut extension and a 2-percentage-point reduction in the payroll tax, the retail therapy should continue into the new year.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2040964-1,00.html

US December Unemployment Rate Drops To 9.4%

By Jeffry Bartash, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. economy added 103,000 jobs in the final month of 2010 while the nation’s unemployment rate fell to 9.4%, the lowest level since May 2009, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Payrolls for November and October were also revised higher by 70,000 jobs, the government said. Read the full report.

The December gain in jobs, however, fell short of expectations. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had predicted a net 175,000 increase, with many raising their forecasts earlier this week after another key report indicated a pickup in hiring. See MarketWatch calendar of key economic indicators.

The slow U.S. recovery since the end of the recession in mid-2009 is partly the result of high unemployment, which depresses consumer spending, the single largest source of the nation’s economic growth. Increased hiring by businesses more confident in a U.S. recovery is seen as the key to nursing the economy back to good health.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, dropped to 9.4% in December from 9.8% in November, according to a separate survey of 60,000 households. It’s the biggest one-month decline since April 1998.

In December, the ranks of unemployed fell to 14.5 million from 15 million, while the number of employed people increased by 300,000 to 139 million. Economists had been expecting the unemployment rate to remain flat. The jobless rate spiked to as high as 10.1% in October 2009, compared to under 5% before the 2007-2009 recession began.

The latest increase in job growth is one of many signs that the U.S. economy is gradually emerging from its malaise following the official end of the recession in the summer of 2009.

Earlier this week, for example, the giant payroll-processing firm ADP reported a surprisingly large 297,000 gain in private-sector employment last month. ADP data and the government’s payroll report track each other very closely over time, though some months can show large gaps between the two. That appeared to be the case in December.

Read more here.

Pittsburgh Metro Sees Unemployment Rate Drop and Jobs Increase in June

For the long term unemployed in the Pittsburgh Metro area the June unemployment report is bittersweet.  For our area, the unemployment rate dropped from 8.6% in May to 8.3%, while adding 7,700 jobs.  The good news is this represents almost 4,000 more jobs than one year ago.

While good news for area economists, who see the Pittsburgh Metro getting better through the rest of the year, it is little help to the more than 100,000 residents who couldn't find work.  Our sense here at EmploymentGuide.com is that employers are beginning to increase their recruitment activities.

While summer is normally a slow recruitment period in good times, this summer has seen a steadily (albeit slowly) increasing number of job postings as well as inquiries toward near term recruitment plans.  Our job fair held recently at Mellon Arena attracted 40 local employers which was the most in two years.


For more details on the job numbers go to the Post Gazette and the Tribune-Review.

Friday Musings on the hourly job front for May 4th, 2007

Local unemployment rate plummets over past year. This is the headline for an article in today’s Pittsburgh Business Times and confirms what we have opined for the past 2 months. Pittsburgh is finally growing jobs again. The unemployment rate in Pittsburgh dropped to 3.6% in March. Harold Miller, CEO of Future Strategies LLC rightfully cautions not to get too overly joyous just yet. Part of the Pittsburgh area tightening can be attributed to a decline in the number of people seeking jobs, normally a sign of a weakening job market causing more jobseekers to get frustrated and stop looking. However, Pittsburgh could well be different in this area. We are losing overall population due to a higher death rate than birth rate. The seven county Pittsburgh metro is the second oldest in the country, due mostly to the outflow caused by the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980’s. What does this mean to the average hourly jobseeker? It means more opportunity. There are not enough new jobseekers coming into the market than are retiring. This is already beginning to cause business owners and recruiters much more of a challenge to attract not only qualified candidates, but ANY candidates for many of their positions. Especially their entry level skilled positions. In a previous writing we noted the local concerns of our young people coming out of high school without enough basic skills to compete for many of these jobs. Perhaps this will be the catalyst for foreign immigrants once again viewing Pittsburgh as a place where opportunity abounds. Hopefully this unnatural tightening will not have a detrimental effect of keeping businesses from opening or expanding in our area.

We had an interesting long conversation with a friend who is a shop steward for the Sheet Metal Workers in Pittsburgh. He has been a sheet metal worker for 17 years and has worked through both good and bad times. The biggest concern for his union right now, with multiple large construction projects on the horizon, isn’t just finding enough qualified workers to fill positions, but finding enough who are dependable and responsible. They have bigger problems than in the past with no-shows, absenteeism and tardiness primarily among their apprentices.

We both felt that this is the type of problem we wish we had to deal with in the past. He agreed the next 3 to 5 years look very good for job creation in southwest Pennsylvania. We will need to see positive job numbers become a trend over time before any celebration.