The recent US Employment figures showed a slight increase in overall unemployment, but that news and the news of revised job creation numbers for 2012 helped the Dow Industrial Average shoot past 14,000 for the first time since Oct 2007. Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics was quoted as saying that “the revisions point to a fairly healthy 181,000 per month trend in 2012, which is more than strong enough over time to bring down the unemployment rate.” This is more good news for a healthy start to 2013. While overall manufacturing employment hasn’t changed significantly since the middle of 2012, the pool of technical talent keep shrinking. We are seeing the return of aggressive hiring tactics by companies, like sign on bonuses, to land the talent they need to maintain and build on the positive results of the last 2 years.
We are now fully experiencing a candidate driven market where companies will continue to struggle to attract and acquire top talent. With the number of open positions growing there are less “unemployed” candidates. Even those individuals who are currently without a job are finding that they have a higher number good employment choices compared to last year at this time.