Joe Coombs is Senior Analyst, Workforce Trends and Forecasting for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Joe tracks current trends and issues in the labor market including the economy's impact on hiring and recruiting, wages and compensation, retirement benefits and the aging of the work force. In addition to The Jobs Blog, he also writes monthly and bi-annual reports on the labor market using data culled by the research department. Contact him at Joseph.Coombs@shrm.org or on LinkedIn.
HR will be called upon for creative retention strategies
It may be of little consolation to those who remain out of work, but more people are viewing the U.S. labor market in a positive light. Consider, for example, the plight of “discouraged workers,” who are defined by the federal government as people not looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.
By most accounts, 2014 went down as a successful year for job creation. Problems do remain— millions are still out of work, others are underemployed and middle-class jobs are shrinking—but purely from a numbers standpoint, the labor market grew at a solid pace.
Recent labor market sentiments have frequently mirrored observers’ opinions of the U.S. economy as a whole. Every good report seems to come with a caveat:
We are in the midst of a stretch of job growth not seen since the 1930s, according to federal data. Yet millions of people remain out of work.
CHICAGO—Some of the U.S. labor market’s biggest problems, particularly income inequality and a lack of employment opportunities, are long-standing issues—not issues created by the Great Recession, according to experts gathered here for the annual meeting of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE).
Economists, academics and other speakers addressed the challenges facing the unemployed, underemployed and other people struggling to make a living. NABE is a nonprofit trade group based in Washington, D.C.
For quite some time, contingent staffing was primarily a gap-filler for many employers: Earn a new contract, hire “x” amount of people to do the job and cut the cord when the work was finished.
At the midway point of 2014, it is clear that the U.S. labor market has shaken off its winter slowdown. Preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that on average, 231,000 jobs were created each month from February to May, compared with an average of 114,000 jobs in December 2013 and January 2014.
The share of workers aged 55 and older in the U.S. labor force will jump to 25.6 percent in 2022, up from just 11.8 percent in 1992, according to federal data. Some people stay on the job because they are living longer, healthier lives than their predecessors, but many are also unprepared financially to retire and need to keep working. What is the greatest benefit to this trend, and are there any drawbacks?
America’s pending retirement crisis—a scenario characterized by millions of workers facing financial shortfalls in their golden years—has gotten the attention of state governments.
When she was a high school sophomore in Chicago, Antoinette Leatherberry was recruited for an industry “early identification program” sponsored by a local college.
“What, four more years of this?”
Even the most skeptical economic forecasters have to agree that the U.S. labor market has made strides, albeit small ones, in putting more people back to work in 2013.
HR professionals no doubt have spent plenty of time managing differences among their companies’ various generations of employees. Now, one consultant says, there’s a new group of workers who deserve immediate attention: Generation Z.
You’ve probably heard the stories in the news: Americans aren’t using much vacation time these days, either because of economic concerns or the fact that they’re worried about job security and don’t want to be away from the office for too long.
Millions of goods-producing jobs have been eliminated in the past 20 years, and although the manufacturing industry has bounced back in recent months, the most consistent growth in the labor market has been tied to the service sector for the past several quarters.
