>>By The Numbers: October 13, 2017

By The Numbers: October 13, 2017

Each week, we’ll brief you on notable stats and happenings related to current events impacting the job market now or in the foreseeable future.

33K Jobs Gone With the Wind

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics September jobs report states that 33,000 jobs have been lost, and could be due to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.  The job figures on the state level will be available on October 20, which will give more detailed info on what’s happening.

However, unemployment continued to hover at full employment, now at 4.2%. U.S. News & World Report highlighted that that number of jobs lost is the largest number since coming out of the recession in 2011. Not surprisingly, the leisure and hospitality sector lost a large number of jobs at 111,000.  In comparison, manufacturing lost 1K jobs, information services lost 9K and retail lost about 3K.

As far as increases, the industries of transportation and warehousing, financial services, and health care and social assistance all saw increases at 22K, 10K, and 13K respectively. Average hourly earning also rose 2.9% to $26.55.  The BountyJobs newly released Annual Agency Recruiting Benchmark Report for 2017 as well as the Agency Recruiting Benchmark Report for Healthcare give a full view of the hiring landscape, including looking forward at potential trends affecting 2018.

Temp Jobs on the Rise in September

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that temporary jobs increased by 5,900 in September. This comes at a time when total nonfarm jobs decreased.  “This month was a tale of two surveys, likely due to hurricanes,” said Tony Gregoire, director of research for the Americas at Staffing Industry Analysts.

Randstad Sourceright CEO Rebecca Henderson said, “While the softer job growth reflects the devastation of the hurricanes, there has been a positive surge of contingent employment to support disaster recovery efforts. FEMA has already filled hundreds of temporary positions to help rebuild communities impacted in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Job openings for contingent talent have also spiked in the construction and hospitality sectors, and we expect to see similar demand from the engineering and environmental sectors in the coming weeks and months.”

Economist Gus Faucher told Bloomberg the underlying economy is in OK shape despite the drop in jobs.

“I don’t think this is indicative of problems in the labor market — it’s because of the hurricanes,” Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. in Pittsburgh, told Bloomberg. Excluding effects of the storms, “the economy is in decent shape, the labor market continues to improve, and we’ll bounce back to job growth in the final three months of 2017.”

“While temporary staffing overall showed promising trends as most of the segments did a comeback in August, healthcare staffing firms showed signals of decelerating growth,” Research Analyst Sree Thiyagarajan said.

Median year-over-year revenue growth in the travel nursing segment fell to 7% in August from 9% in July. Median revenue growth also fell in the allied healthcare segment to 6% from 8%; and in the locum tenens segment to 6% from 13%.

 BountyJobs Bites

Best Countries to Find Skilled Talent

The Total Workforce Index released by ManpowerGroup Solutions listed New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore as the best countries to find skilled talent. The top-five countries, which also include Canada and the US, are most attractive for employers because of effective regulation, skilled workers, and high productivity.

Healthcare Costs Rattle the 10K Baby Boomers Retiring Daily

BenefitsPro reports that 10K Baby Boomers are retiring each day, based on the Pew Research and Social Security Administration figures. Further, BenefitsPro states that healthcare costs for retired couples aged 65 and higher could be $275K out of pocket – not including rehab and long-term nursing care.

Seasonal hiring expected to grow in 2017

The National Retail Federation estimated that over 730,000 jobs were added in 2016 during peak seasonal hiring, that number is expected to grow in the 2017 hiring seasons. This article reviews a few different tactics to use to find the right workers.

While retail positions are still the majority in holiday hiring, Challenger, Gray & Christmas also report that flexible roles in-store, as well as remote, are ways in which employers are upping the competition factor in order to land the best candidates.

In addition, transportation and warehousing employment has increased – these roles increased by 8% or 20K jobs in 2016, and 2017 is expected to see those numbers rise.

More employers are moving their in-store personnel to last-mile, shipping and warehouse locations, Greg Dyer, president of commercial staffing and enterprise accounts at Randstad U.S., told HR Dive. Unfortunately, those jobs aren’t always easy to fill; they tend to be physically demanding.

“It’s created a bit of a shortage in certain markets,” Dyer said. “It’s very difficult to get the talent.”

How will employees react with the New CEO pay ratio disclosures?

A Willis Towers Watson poll states that employers are concerned about the reaction their workers will have when the CEO-employee pay ratios are announced next year. The new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule requires publicly held companies to disclose CEO-to-worker pay ratios. The Willis Towers Watson poll found that of the 360 executives and compensations experts polled, about half said they see forecasting employee reaction to the ratio disclosure as their toughest part of putting the new rule into practice.   As well, 48% don’t have a solid plan of how to communicate this info to their employees, 39% plan to have their organization’s leadership answer employees’ questions, 16% are preparing managers for discussions with workers, and 14% have a detailed communication plan to inform workers. About 14% of respondents don’t plan to inform workers at all.

Upskilling on the Decline

A Randstad U.S. report found that one-third of employees in the U.S. took no action in ‘upskilling’ in the past year.  Upskilling is essentially education increasing skills for a job or industry: classes, workshops, etc. The quarterly Randstad Workmonitor survey found that ‘although 80% of workers feel upskilling is their responsibility, neither they nor their employers are acting on upskilling opportunities.’

Social Media Defines You in Employers’ Eyes

Recent research from totaljobs finds that about 75% of interviewers check social media for candidates before interviewing them.  Conversely, 36% of candidates don’t expect their social media presence to be reviewed.

22,500 Healthcare Jobs Added in September

The U.S. Bureau of Labor has reported that the U.S. has added 22,500 healthcare jobs in September, bringing the total number of healthcare jobs to about 15.8 million.  This gain happened in spite of the decrease in total number of nonfarm jobs.

However, the agency noted that an increase in ambulatory healthcare services jobs of 25,000 was partially offset by a decline in nursing care facilities jobs of 9,000.

Millenials Twice Likely Than Baby Boomers to be Registered Nurses

A new study in the journal HealthAffairs finds that millennials are twice as likely to be registered nurses than baby boomers. This helps soften widespread concern of a continued nursing shortage due to the retiring of baby boomers, Peter Buerhaus, told Anne Cantrell of Montana State University News Service. Buerhaus is director of the university’s Center for Interdisciplinary Health Worker Studies.

“This fear no longer appears to be justified, as the millennial generation is well on its way to replacing the baby boomers and supplying an additional 1 million RNs between now and 2030,” Buerhaus told the news service. Although there is the caveat that there will be slower growth through 2030, and there could be localized shortages of nurses in the US.

U.S. Staffing Industry Forecast: September 2017 Update

  • US staffing market revenue projected to grow 3% in 2017 and in 2018 to top $145 billion
  • Strongest areas in 2018 are projected to be education and marketing/creative
  • Professional staffing continuing to grow at a faster rate than commercial staffing

New Seasonally Adjusted Numbers for August Job Openings

U.S. job openings in August decreased .9% over July to 6.08 million, per seasonally adjusted numbers released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Q4 Hiring Seeing Year Over Year Growth

CareerBuilder’s annual Q4 2017 Job Forecast survey of hiring managers and workers finds that employers plan to increase hiring in Q4 for both seasonal and traditional roles. An increase in pay is also planned by the majority of employers. According to the survey, 35% of employers expect to hire seasonal workers, up from 33% last year. Transitioning seasonal employees to traditional staff is on the rise at 70%. Employers planning to hire more full-time, ongoing employees in Q4 has risen to 43%, up from 34% last year. Only 7% of employers are planning on reducing staff in Q4, down from 9% last year. On the flipside, 19% of workers stated they are looking for seasonal work this year, up from 16% last year.

Upcoming Bill to Increase International Nurse Supply

The Emergency Nursing Supply Relief Act proposes to designate 8,000 visas for healthcare workers in shortage professions. Many hospitals look to hiring international nurses to fill open roles, however, current visa regulations are slowing down the process.

“My company has 1,000 open orders, and I would say that other companies within the AAIHR [American Association of International Healthcare Recruitment] are clearly in the hundreds, if not higher, of open job orders for international nurses,” says Shari Dingle Costantini, MBA, RN, AAIHR.

 

By |2017-11-15T20:54:33+00:00October 13th, 2017|Categories: Talent Acquisition Trends|Comments Off on By The Numbers: October 13, 2017

About the Author:

Erin Geiger is a seasoned Content, Editorial, and Product Engagement professional with two decades of experience creating content as well as overall content direction and strategy. Her background stems from a variety of online verticals ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 corporations.