2007 Job Outlook Starts Strong

Each month a host of employment data arrives rife with conflicts, conundrums and confusion that defy analysis, clarifying the employment scene with certitude akin to reading animal entrails. The new years dangles the bauble of clarify with surprisingly unified employment predictions.

Growth in manufacturing and service jobs is coming in January according to a study from alliance of the Society for Human Resource Management and the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations. Rather than concerns about flagging employment, brows furrow about the search for qualified applicants as illustrated by the concocted index of recruiting difficulty included in the study that pegs the manufacturing ranking at 19.5 and service at 22.5.

Meanwhile, CareerBuilder.com released its own survey with more heartening concrete numbers, including:

"Nearly one in 10 employers will hire more than of 500 new employees in 2007."

The fine print reveals that 36 percent of employers surveyed plan to add 1-10 employees in 2007, 29 percent expect to hire 50 plus warm bodies and 20 percent plan to push their hiring past the three-figure mark. Health care leads the recruiting rate race with a 24 percent increase, but IT is among the leaders with an expected 13 percent rise.

Earlier in the month, another report warmed the hearts of the tech community, predicting a 14 percent IT hiring increase in the first quarter of 2007. According to the report from Robert Half Technology, that increase ranks as the highest rate since the fourth quarter of 2001. The report surveyed CIOs, who believed that overall business growth and increased demand for user support would drive hiring.

There's more rosy news in the microclimate of Silicon Valley. According to data from the California Employment Development Department, 13,900 new jobs arrived in Santa Clara and San Benito Counties in 2006 bringing total employment to 894,800. The 1.6 percent year-on-year increase in hiring marks the high water mark for the past 5 ? years for Silicon Valley and outstripped the statewide employment growth rate of 1.1 percent.

Moving beyond pure employment data, the outlook for startups also looks rosy with the release of a National Venture Capital Association survey predicting $28 billion in VC investment for 2007, including a 70 percent increased in Internet investment and 69 percent increase in new media investment.

Posted by Benjamin Tomkins on December 28, 2006