Did you catch the news from the National Association for Business Economics this week about how the forecasters there expect job growth to be better than it has been, but nowhere near good enough to do much about unemployment?
Missed it, did you? Or maybe you would recognize it if we reframed our approach. Did you catch the news that economic forecasters think hiring will be better this year than they initially expected?
We prefer the former only because it preserves that stereotype about how journalists are always negative.
Any way you say it, the number of monthly new jobs this years is forecast to average 170,000. That’s better than what the economists thought back in November when they predicted only 127,000 new jobs on average each month. It won’t help the unemployment rate much, though. The forecasters say it will stay at 8.3 percent for the rest of the year.
Let us hasten to point out, that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put January’s new job number at 243,000. February’s numbers will be out a week from today.
Now we turn to what is becoming our feature of the week — the latest jobs startup:
What do you get when you take a matching algorithm, some funky variation of the word job, and mix it all together? Yes, another recruiting-related startup! The beta site ExactMe is mainly drawing people from Asia and Europe, but it’s growing in popularity in South America. It’s hiring in Brazil and Argentina; a month after its January 25 Argentina launch, it is boasting 40,000 Argentinian users. This video explains a bit about what the site does.
Speaking of startups, and ExactMe — which was started by a guy who was born and Argentina and spent some time in Israel — we’ve been noticing a trend for a while now as we’ve watched new recruiting sites launch so frequently over the past year or so. Many have originated in Silicon Valley, but a decent number from elsewhere: Canada (such as Jobbook, among others), the UK (a long list of recruiting startups we’ve written about on ERE), and Israel (where there’s a live-for-today, entrepreneurial culture).
The nursing shortage of a few years ago has eased, but there are still plenty of hard-to-fill healthcare jobs. Finding skilled administrators can be a challenge, and good luck filling a medial informatics positions. As healthcare reforms and the national healthcare program begins to phase in, filling hospital jobs in the U.S. won’t be getting any easier.
Savvy recruiters who want to get a clearer look into the hiring crystal ball can sign-up for a free webcast for the healthcare industry. Taleo and the recruitment marketing company CKR Interactive are the sponsors of “Hard to Fill Positions for 2012 and Why Social Media is Imperative.” Besides getting a peek at vacancy rates and trends, the hour-long webcast promises to show you how to effectively use social media to attract the candidates you need.
Register here for the March 15th webcast. It begins at 9 a.m. PDT.
Companies don’t mind if a senior executive commutes to a new job rather than relocates — so long as they’re going to move eventually. That’s according to a new survey of Philadelphia employers, by the search firm Salveson Stetson. “Nearly three-quarters of 17 major employers said they allow a senior executive to set up a local living arrangement during the week but commute back to their home and family elsewhere on weekends,” the survey finds. “But every company that said it permits creative commuting arrangements also puts limits on what they view as a temporary situation.”