Employers are expressing more optimism about the future and it’s showing in their hiring plans for the rest of this year.
CareerBuilder’s Midyear Job Forecast says more employers expect to add headcount in the next several months than said that last year. Employers told CareerBuilder they will add to the ranks of full and part-time workers, and 33 percent will increase their temp or contract staffing workers.
The CareerBuilder survey shows a brighter employment picture than the one at the beginning of the year. With the U.S. Congress mired in budget politics and with a renewal of the debt ceiling crisis looming, barely a quarter of the hiring managers surveyed for the report foresaw increased full or part-time hiring ahead.
Now that those issues are off the table, 47 percent of employers say they plan to add full-timers by the end of the year. That’s a 7 percent increase over the numbers in last year’s mid-year CareerBuilder forecast.
By industry, here’s what CareerBuilder’s survey of hiring managers and HR professionals found:
- Information technology – 59 percent plan to hire full-time, permanent employees, up from 51 percent last year.
- Financial services – 57 percent plan to hire full-time, permanent employees, up from 52 percent.
- Hospitality – 55 percent plan to hire full-time, permanent employees, up from 46 percent.
- Health care – 54 percent plan to hire full-time, permanent employees, up from 51 percent.
- Manufacturing – 54 percent plan to hire full-time, permanent employees, up from 52 percent.
What CareerBuilder’s been finding in its hiring intentions surveys has so far this year translated into real job growth numbers (June added 288,000 jobs) and is being reflected in other indices. The Employment Trends Index, compiled by the non-profit business research group, The Conference Board, rose to 119.62 in June, up from 119.03 in May, a 6.3 percent gain over the June 2013 index.
“The rapid increase in the Employment Trends Index in recent months suggests that strong job growth is likely to continue through the summer,” said Gad Levanon, director of macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board.
The Palmer Forecast, released Wednesday by staffing industry consultant G. Palmer & Associates, says employers will increase their third quarter hiring of temp workers by 7.6 percent over the same period in 2013. Temp hiring in the 2nd quarter increased 8.4 percent, just .1 percentage point off the 8.5 percent predicted by the Palmer Forecast.
Meanwhile CareerBuilder’s forecast says 31 percent of employers plan to hire full or part-time workers in the third quarter, a slight increase from the 30 percent who said that last year.
The prediction, however, may be too modest. For instance, the careers publisher predicted 26 percent of employers would add full or part-time headcount in the second quarter. According to the current survey, 36 percent did.
SHRM expects this third quarter of 2014 to get off to a rousing start. The organization’s LINE report forecasts strong increases in hiring this month for both manufacturing (+14.8) and the service sector (+6.7). It’s a four year for both sectors. With more jobs, hiring difficulty is also increasing, SHRM says. Manufacturing recruiters saw an increase of 12.1 points from June 2013 in recruiting difficulty. The increase for employers in the service sector was 6.3 points.
One more report graphically shows the challenging hiring environment for all employers. A few months ago, Dice Holdings introduced new measures of hiring difficulty. One, the Dice-DFH Vacancy Duration Measure, calculates the average number of working days it takes to fill jobs. For all jobs, the average is now 25.1 days to fill, a 64 percent since July 2009.
Filling a job in the information sector now takes an average 38.7 days, the most of the 12 private sectors tracked. The next highest – 36.3 days – is for financial service jobs, with health services (35.3 days) not far behind.