November 2022 Newsletter
Business has Slowed Down, but does that mean Tech & Cyber Skills are Easier to Find?
You would think that due to the slowing down of the economy & business over the last few months as reported in the press, that there would be more Cyber/ IT Security & Tech Skills available on the market & that salary expectations from candidates looking would have cooled a bit!
Here at Proxime, we are seeing the opposite, we are seeing more and more firms turning to us to search for the “hard to find” Cyber/ IT Security & Tech Skills, skills which are a real challenge to establish.
As outlined by Karin Kimbrough, LinkedIn’s chief economist in the below article, though we are seeing a slowdown in global economy, unemployment figures are not taking a massive hit, which economists are trying to understand.
Team Proxime are continually building their community of tech and cyber/ IT Security professionals and we would be delighted to assist you with your next skills needs.
We look forward to hearing from you,
David Gadd,
Talent Attraction Director.
Visit me on Linkedin (26K+ Connections, 26k+ Followers, which benefits you!)
LinkedIn’s Chief Economist Shares Her Take on Today’s Economy.
Speaking at the first in-person Talent Connect since the pandemic, LinkedIn’s chief economist Karin Kimbrough started by acknowledging what talent leaders are all too familiar with: “I’m here today because we’re in a moment of uncertainty,” Karin said. “The macro picture is murky, and there’s been a lot of change. I don’t need to tell you — you’ve all been living this for the last two-and-a-half years, right? It’s been a rollercoaster.”
From the start of the pandemic to the heyday of the Great Reshuffle to today’s mounting economic uncertainty, talent professionals have been forced to grapple with a dizzying number of twists and turns.
“I hope to help make some sense of all these developments in the economy and the labor market,” said Karin, sharing insights from LinkedIn data, based on the actions of 870 million members and nearly 60 million companies.
Where we are today: navigating global uncertainty
Where are we now? It’s a simple question with a not-so-simple answer, due to recent mixed economic signals.
In the U.S., for example, growth has slowed down through the first half of the year, with a mild recession seeming likely in 2023. At the same time, the unemployment rate recently reached new lows.
“So overall, a mixed picture so far: slowing growth, but a still-tight labor market,” Karin said. “And it’s a similar picture in many other countries around the globe: record low unemployment, record high inflation, rising rates, and slowing growth.”
“The global economy is coming back down to earth after a meteoric rise last year,” Karin added. While Asia-Pacific’s projected plateau stands as an outlier, growth in many regions in 2022 is expected to be less than half the growth seen the previous year.
“It really does feel like what some people would call a hangover,” Karin said, “and what economists would call a globalized economic slump.”
Despite that outlook, it’s not all doom and gloom. “The bottom is not dropping out of the economy,” Karin said. There are mixed signals: low unemployment that will probably rise; high inflation will probably fall — it’s all in flux, but that’s normal for a turn in the business cycle. She noted that recessions are part of a normal business cycle, that they tend to happen every six to 10 years, and that on average they only last about nine months.
Of course, the last few years have felt anything but “normal,” and talent professionals find themselves facing more uncertainty than ever before.
Drawing from her time as an economist at the New York Federal Reserve during the Great Recession of 2008, Karin offered three tips to help talent professionals navigate economic uncertainty:
First, stay adaptive.
You’ll need to be able to adapt quickly, staying cognizant of your environment and your exposure.
Second, get informed.
You’ll need to use whatever data you have at hand to make an informed decision.
Finally, be decisive.
You’ll rarely ever have the full picture, but can’t let analysis paralysis stop you from taking action.
Full article from LinkedIn here.
Demand for frontline roles and entry-level positions grows rapidly, especially in restaurants and retail
Eight or nine of the top 10 jobs with rapidly growing demand could be considered frontline roles or entry-level positions.
Frontline jobs are those that must be done onsite, putting workers in close contact with customers or coworkers. Since the start of the pandemic, companies have struggled to retain and hire these workers — many of whom now expect higher wages and better benefits to compensate for the risks and inconvenience of in-person labor.
This trend isn’t new: Over a year ago, Karin Kimbrough, the chief economist at LinkedIn, suggested that “for in-person roles during COVID, there’s an added element of wanting to be compensated for a perceived risk,” and she warned that companies “would be remiss” if they’d didn’t consider raising compensation for these workers.
In a recent interview with the BBC, David Dwertmann, an associate professor of management at Rutgers, suggested that offering candidates greater flexibility can also help fill these apparently “unfillable” service roles: “Employers need to react not just by increasing wages and providing sign-on bonuses, but also, for example, by scheduling employees in different way,” David said. “Making sure that there’s some predictability . . . so that they can, for example, manage childcare.”
In recent months, some frontline roles have jumped into our top 10 ranking of the most in-demand jobs overall.
In a list that’s typically dominated by highly skilled technical roles, the jobs of driver and cashier both jumped over a dozen spots, while retail salesperson rose seven positions to make it into the top five.
Since these rankings only reflect what jobs employers pay to post on LinkedIn, it’s possible that there’s always been a similar number of openings for frontline jobs — the biggest difference now may be that companies can no longer rely solely on word-of-mouth and help wanted signs to fill those frontline roles.
Examining the outliers: Why demand is spiking for optometrists and tax accountants
Only two of the jobs — tax accountant and optometrist — with the fastest-growing demand buck the broader trend of frontline, entry-level work.
And we can write off tax accountants: The recent spike is no surprise, since we regularly see big swings in demand for tax accountants, particularly around major tax deadlines in April and October.
On the other hand, the increase in demand for optometrists really caught our eye (last pun, we promise).
As we dug a little deeper, we came across these comments from the chief executive of a major eyecare company, suggesting that the struggles with hiring optometrists aren’t so different from the struggles of hiring frontline workers.
“There is a shortage of optometrists in America, an unusually high number of optometrists retired at the pandemic time,” Reade Fahs, CEO of National Vision Inc., said in a recent earnings call. (Note: National Vision Inc. is not necessarily included in this analysis of in-demand jobs, as LinkedIn’s job posting data is aggregated and anonymized prior to analysis.)
Along with a higher level of retirements, Reade suspects that flexibility could be a key driver of the current shortage, as it is for other parts of the workplace. “So people who were five-day doctors,” Reade surmised, “might say, ‘You know what, I have decided I’d like to be a four-day doctor.’”
Read the whole article from linkedIn here.
