Before this week, I last treated the issue of Career Builder’s quarterly forecasts in one of my earliest posts—Examining CareerBuilder’s U.S. Hiring Forecasts for Q1 vs. Q2 2010. While the hiring forecasts for Q1 and Q2 certainly contained a kernel of optimism, there still existed a considerable amount of ambivalence about whether global markets were headed in the direction of a sustained recovery. As I discussed in my last post, USAToday and CareerBuilder’s Mid-Year Job Forecast is not too dissimilar from the Q2 forecast: that labor markets are beginning to show some signs that they might begin to loosen, if only somewhat. Upon further analysis, this is not all the report indicates. Hiring forecast aside, the report contained interesting information related to employee perceptions and how the downturn has affected America’s workforce.
Overall, the opinion workers have of their employer, post-downturn, is “Unchanged,” though 25% responded that their “perception of [their] employer” has worsened. No doubt, many workers, because of layoffs and emergency budget cuts, were pushed to their breaking point in terms their productivity and workload. The more surprising, and perhaps illuminating statistic came from respondents answering the question, “Are you currently exploring or planning to explore new employment opportunities when the economy improves?” 29% of workers responded, “Yes,” while the majority 51% responded “No,” leaving 18% “Unsure.”
This statistic is important because it seems to show that worker sentiment is improving. The news of the actual, material causes for the financial downturn (as well as the causes themselves), triggered a crisis of demand, which might be equated to a crisis of confidence. This statistic, though still small, indicates that the psyche of the American worker has finally begun its road to recovery.
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