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State of the Job
Market Columns |
May 31, 2003
By Brian McCullough, Head Writer,
ResumeWriters.com
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As always, this column and our data is provided by the
professionals at ResumeWriters.com.
Learn how we collect our data here.
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For the first time in this year, we can
report some good news: things didn't get worse this month. In fact, we have
seen a second consecutive month where our composite index number rose
slightly.
The average Index score climbed back and
held above the 3.0 mark, which we take to be a very welcome sign. We consider
any job market with a score below 3 to be seriously depressed. To have the
average of the entire job market fall below 3 in March gave a good indication
that the job market was in historically slow territory.
Remember, the 5.0-6.0 range represents a
job market that is merely in standard health. Given this, we still have a long
way to go before we can declare that the overall job market is "back to
normal."
As we opined last month, the conclusion of
the war in Iraq has done much to get the gears of the job market moving again.
It's too soon to say if the market is starting to move consistently in the
right direction, but if we were to see several consecutive months of
stabilization in our job segments, we might be able to say that the bottom of
the job market is behind us.
Some notable job market segments:
The Banking/Brokerage category
finally seems to be recovering after nearly two years of weakness.
Entertainment/Hospitality is still
in it's post-war spring-back. We continue to hear from clients that companies
in this industry are ramping up hiring for the summer in hopes of recouping
lost revenue from the very week Winter/Fall season.
Real Estate remains on of the
strongest sectors of the job market. With the hot housing market, this is one
of the few industries where employers can't seem to hire enough people. We are
writing more real estate resumes then we can ever remember writing (especially
for people entering the industry for the first time).
Biotech/Science continues it's
unusual weakness as mergers among some of the biggest companies in the
industry are initiating layoffs to reduce redundancies.
What is going on with the
Education/Teaching sector? Usually this is a steady sector that never sees
much movement in either direction. But for the past several months it's been
moving solidly down. It seems that budget cutting among cash-starved states
has meant new positions are scarce and that layoffs are actually occurring.
All this while schools around the country are reporting classroom
over-crowding!
This is the seasonal peak time for
Students/Grads. And the glimpse of the market we're getting is
increasingly dismal. Even internships seem to be in short supply. Graduate
school applications are reportedly up and we're certainly seeing a large
number of our student-clients abandoning their job searches after only a few
weeks of looking.
The
above reporting is taken from polled evidence and personal impressions, collected from the career
professionals at ResumeWriters.com.
ResumeWriters.com does not collect or share personal data
from it's clients. Information reported is of a macro, and not personal
nature.
Learn more about how we collect our data
here.
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