Fed Chairman Ben Berneke’s recent statements to Congress that “the economic outlook remains ‘unusually uncertain’,” have helped to reinforce fears that the American economy is only slowly trudging towards recovery, with the hope that it won’t backslide. Unfortunately, a cloud of uncertainty continues to linger over global markets (particularly American and European markets). Despite this ominous cloud, however, CareerBuilder and USAToday’s Mid-Year Job Forecast 2010 contains the same trace elements of optimism as CareerBuilder’s Q1 and Q2 reports. Their findings?
Overall, the Mid-Year report is almost an exact reflection of CareerBuilder’s Q1 and Q2 reports. As jobs data has indicated, the private sector has begun to selectively hire again, though, not enough to bring the unemployment rate beneath 9% before the end of 2011, says the IMF. Nevertheless, what follows is a brief summary of CareerBuilder and USAToday’s findings:
• Responding to the questions, “Do you plan to hire new employees in the second half of 2010?” 41% of employers answered, “Yes,” while a roughly equal 42% answered, “No.” However, these figures must be understood in light of additional statistics related to the number of full-time permanent vs. part-time employees employers are expecting to hire during Q3.
• In response to the questions, “In the third quarter…does your company, at your location, plan to increase, decrease or make no change to the number of part-time employees,” 65% of employers responded, “No Change,” while 21% responded the there would be an “Increase.”
• Responding to the additional question, “In the third quarter, does your company, at your location, plan to increase, decrease or make no change in its number of full-time permanent employees?” an average “64.25%” of employers answered “No Change.” An average 21% responded that there would be an “Increase” of hiring full-time, permanent employees.
• Thus, after crunching the numbers, of 41% of the employees that employers nationwide said they would be hiring in the second half of 2010, approximately half will be part-time employees (perhaps adding to the large number of underemployed—which Gallup pegged at 9% in mid-July).
• In addition to this, the dataset compiled by CareerBuilder and USAToday indicates that the majority of the movement in labor markets is being driven by mid-large sized employers (i.e. companies 51-250 employees in size, or employers with 250+ employees on their books).
The Mid-Year report, however, not only shows that employers are once again thinking about hiring, but that the once scarred psyche of the global workforce is beginning to recover too; though, this latter aspect of the report will be discussed later this week.
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