Sunday, July 06, 2008

The Job Market: July 2008


It has been almost a year since the world heard the term "sub-prime loan" on the news for the first time and the financial world has been shaken to the core since.

Leading financial institutions have been turned on their head in the wake of the crisis and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in those firms.

Now we have the impact of the increase in gas prices in the US and the beginning of the labor recession in the US that seems to have begun in May of this year starting.

Until this point, jobs cuts were isolated to manufacturing jobs and Wall Street jobs; manufacturing has been in constant decline in the US for some time; Wall Street was added in the aftermath of the sub-prime mess where firms like Citi, Merill, UBS, really everyone, cleaned some of their house up.

Now with gas prices roaring, job are being cut in larger numbers and across industries. As I chronicle some of them, in The Job Market Blog, the cuts are now across industries and include government workers--one of the largest sectors for job creation in the Bush Presidency (along with healthcare).

It doesn't seem to matter what the person does professionally, jobs are disappearing in large numbers (A long time ago, I learned not to believe the US government statistics on job loss or job creation--one look at June's numbers that show 66000 jobs lost nationally but another set from California showing 100000 lost in that state alone in another survey make me scratch my head in wonderment).

And many of them are jobs held by Baby Boomers--which means middle management jobs are disappearing and, for now, not being replaced so fast.

Yet firms are continuing to recruit for staff, including many of the financial firms that we have been reading about regularly in the press.

What's hot?

Nothing if you are a 55 year old middle level manager. To be clear, I am not suggesting bias here (for once). I am pointing to how organizations in down cycles look for staff level professionals--"doers", rather than people who manage how things are done or how things can be done better.

The exception is in consulting--senior professionals who are willing to travel, who have done consulting at some point in their past, and are willing to accept travel as part of their diet are finding that there are a host of firms competing aggressively for their services.

For firms that are hiring, you have choices at some levels of your hiring and clearly few qualified candidates in others.

I expect the labor slowdown to continue into 2009--after all, the third leg of the economic/political problems will occur with a new President assuming office. No disrespect to Senators Obama or McCain, but business hates change and that is what we have ahead of us--change no matter who is elected.

It will get messier.



Jeff Altman
The Big Game Hunter
 Concepts in Staffing
thebiggamehunter@cisny.com

© 2008 all rights reserved.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in many disciplines since 1971. He is a retired certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

He is the author of “Get Yourself Hired NOW! The Big Game Hunter’s Guide to Head Hunting Your Next Job and Every Job After That” (in ebook and audio formats) and “Get Your Job Search Organized NOW!” (ebook) Both are available at www.getyourselfhiredNOW.com Register at the site and you will receive free copies of The International Job Board List and a Guide to Resume Writing.

To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search for openings that The Big Game Hunter is working on, to use Jeff’s free job lead search engine, Job Search Universe, to subscribe to Jeff’s free job hunting ezine, “Head Hunt Your Next Job, or his staffing ezine, “Natural Selection”, or to learn about his VIP program, go to www.jeffaltman.com.

Explore some of The Big Game Hunter's products in "The Universe" series

Plus

Labels: ,

posted by Unknown at 6:27 AM