3/11/2008

Now Hiring

With the economy down it’s expected that the job market would not be a pleasant situation. In fact that is the trend of last month as 63,000 jobs were eliminated. Now this could look like doom for those who are looking for a job or those who feel they have little job security. The good news is that the job market is expected to be hiring in the next couple of months. One report predicts a 26 percent increase in employee hiring within the next three months. This to me seems typical as the next three months is when universities all over the country will be releasing graduates out into the world. Now this percent increase is lower than it was last year at this time but is this due to the state of condition the economy is positioned?

3 comments:

Jordan said...

I think that with the rumors of recession, a lot of employers have negative expectations of what the economy will be like in the next little while. I would think that this would have some effect on the expectation of job hires in the next few months.

Isaac said...

I believe the numbers are lower than they were last year due to the economy. If it is true that there will be a 26% increase in jobs, it will still be a decrease from last year. We still have not seen the full effects of the recession and if it continues to spiral out of control the 26% increase will fall dramatically hurting me and you. Let’s hope this does not happen.

Dr. Tufte said...

The important thing with a statistic like that is the change from last year - and the percentage hiring is down, and the percentage firing is up. Not good.

Also, it is the percentage of employers who are hiring. That's an odd figure: McDonald's hires all year round, while schools don't hire at all in many months.

As to our "recession", here's some food for thought.

First, it isn't official yet - I'm not saying we'll bottom out, but it is useful to remember that we've bottomed out of worse than this and avoided a recession.

Secondly, this downturn is mostly a feature of the west. Big parts of the country are doing OK.

Third, firms are hunkering down. Yes, there has been a loss of jobs, but what we see is that most firms are reducing both their hires and their fires: they aren't panicked yet.