Michael S. Robinson's Blog, page 9

Travel Update

For the past several months I have been on a journey through New York State to discuss economic and fiscal issues that have been plaguing our great nation and what we can do in order to get ourselves back on track.

I invite you to visit my Facebook Page to see where my travels have taken me.

Filed under: Economy, Job Market, Michael S Robinson, New York State, New York State Economy, New York State Jobs, News & Articles, small business

Happy Jobs – A Litmus Test

Happy Jobs

An Approach to Business Development in 2011

For the past few months I have noticed a very interesting trend permeating through our industry, an increase in the demand for permanent jobs within large corporations. Good news right? Indeed, but for how long. Is employment really on the rise, and if so why are so many discouraged?

When the recession began many companies quickly reacted by downsizing their operation to facilitate the sluggish economy and slump in revenues. However, it is thought that some reacted too strongly by cutting the staff to the core and now the need to ramp up the number of employees is a key managerial focus, hence, the need for staffing agencies.

The cost of maintaining a fully staffed Human Capital Management department or HR as previously known, has been prohibitive and costly for most companies. In fact, outsourcing various HR functions has been a trend for several years. For example, a staffing firm is better leveraged to provide effective sourcing, recruiting, interviewing, screening and on-boarding of candidates more effectively than a traditional HR department. Therefore, factoring out those functions among others has been a growing trend with most global companies. As a result, in a hiring crisis, most large corporations turn to staffing firms, headhunters and retained search firms to assist with this process.

My observation is supported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the American Staffing Industry: “On a year-to-year basis, there were 13.3% more workers employed in March 2011 compared with the same month in 2010.”

After examining the above statistics I began to look at the IT sector. What I found was this industry is also adding permanent positions and the two subsectors of the IT industry that are specifically contributing to this economic growth are the Professional and Business Services sector and the Computer and Electronics product manufactures.

Financial News Author Timothy Morgan explains in his article IT Firms Do Their Share, “that in the professional and business services sector, which employs some 16.7 million workers in the States, companies engaged in computer systems design and related services added 6,900 employees, boosting the base of workers to 1.43 million.”

This of course is may seem like good news but at the same time I’m cautiously optimistic since from my perspective our economic crisis lies far deeper than a bump in employment.

Many workers laid off during the Great Recession remain unemployed, laying low under the radar of the employment figures and may remain underemployed for a long time.
Many will have to go back to school to learn a new skill or seek retraining within a new industry.
Our economy still continues to lose thousands of jobs to foreign countries as global companies seek to improve their profit margin.
Many industries continue to shrink and will eventually become obsolete as technology replaces manpower.

So the key for us as Americans is to create new jobs and new vibrant sustainable industries that will take us into the future. The recession was a wake up call for us to proactively evolve our economy with a rapidly changing global economy.

Filed under: Economy, Job Market, Michael S Robinson, New York State, New York State Economy, New York State Jobs, News & Articles, small business