This Friday we received the latest numbers on unemployment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Do yourself a favor and don’t pay attention. These numbers have policy implications, to be sure, but they really don’t affect our job searches.
Lots of jobs have been lost and lots more will be lost. But this is a huge economy, and there will always be a certain number of openings as people move, retire, die, quit, get promoted, etc. Also, large corporations aren’t perfectly efficient with their human capital. Just because a firm cut a thousand jobs doesn’t mean it’s not hiring.
Check out this article from Fortune Magazine which profiles 20 large companies that are planning to hire serious numbers in 2009. Edward Jones, Cisco, Wegman’s, KPMG– some of America’s beheamoths are still adding headcount (notice that Microsoft makes the list, even after announcing plans to cut 5,000 jobs).
Most importantly, you can glean from this article the best industries to focus your job search:
- Health care
- Super markets
- Accounting
- IT engineering
Competition increases naturally with the unemployment rate, but there are still thousands of job openings nationwide. So screw the unemployment figures. These statistics are backward-looking, and if we’re going to beat the competition we’ll all need to do a better job of looking in the opposite direction.
March 16th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Seeking executive level and/or individual contributor position in the field’s of distribution,logistics and transportation. 30 years experience domestic and international with Fedex Express and Ryder Integrated Systems. Willing to relocate and heavy travel not a issue.