March 5, 2010

TGIF: Friday reports point to healthier job market

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If it's Friday, it must be employment report time. For much of the last year and a half, the government's policy of releasing the latest job figures at the end of the week seemed like a cruel plot to ruin the weekends of countless job seekers. Not so this week. Three reports in quick succession have injected a sense of optimism for the next quarter that we have not seen in nearly two years, bringing new meaning to "TGIF."

Bureau of Labor Statistics -- This morning, the U.S. Labor Department said that employers lost about 36,000 jobs nationwide last month, a number that is much smaller than the 100,000 jobs analysts had predicted would be eliminated for February, which was beset by crippling snowstorms on the East Coast. The job shrinkage was not enough to nudge the overall unemployment rate, which held at 9.7 percent. Without the storms, the economists said, February would have likely shown a small gain in employment.

While the February numbers only seemed positive in context of previous depressing reports, the outlook for the next few months looks much brighter indeed.

Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) -- Today also saw the release of the March 2010 LINE report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), with some of the most optimistic numbers about job growth expectations in years. For the fifth month in a row, the SHRM survey showed that both manufacturers and service-sector companies expect a net increase in jobs nationwide.

According to the latest LINE report, the percentage of manufacturers adding jobs in March (45.8 percent) is the highest since June 2008; a year ago, 19.6 percent of the same manufacturers had expected to layoff workers. In the service sector, 51.7 percent of the surveyed companies said they intend to hire in March, the highest percentage since July 2007.

Robert Half Professional Employment Report -- On Wednesday of this week, global staffing firm Robert Half International added to the good news by announcing the results of its first-ever quarterly survey on professional-level hiring trends. For the coming quarter, the study found that 10 percent of the 4,000 executives contacted nationwide expected to increase the number of full-time employees in executive positions during the second fiscal quarter. Another 6 percent said they expect to decrease their professional staff levels, leaving a net 4 percent who expect their payrolls to grow in the next three months.

The occupations that are expected to benefit most from this increase include accounting, finance, insurance, legal, real estate and information technology, the study said. Also, the survey found that 82 percent of the execs expressed confidence that their business prospects would improve in Q2 '10.

Regionally, companies in the Pacific region, including Washington state, mirrored the national figure with the same net 4 percent increase predicted for this spring.

On an ironic note, the Robert Half report also mentioned that the legal profession is doing particularly brisk business these days after the wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures has flooded the industry. "A number of firms are now in a position where they must hire to keep pace with client trends," said Brett Good, a Robert Half district president.

"Many firms, especially those that found they cut their staff too aggressively during the worst of the recession, may need to add personnel at the first sign of a pickup in business," said Max Messmer, Robert Half's chairman and CEO.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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