The Turkey – Looking Around?
Let’s talk turkey here. The turkey is notable for its inflexible neck, which makes it unable to turn its head and see the diversity of a jungle. This leads me to draw the parallel from the turkey in the jungle to the recent unemployment figures released. We need to turn our necks and really evaluate what we are hearing. How does it affect us, personally?
Look at Omaha, NE as an example. I was in Omaha last week conducting a resume workshop and promoting my new books. The US Conference of Mayors and the Nebraska Workforce Coalition both showed Omaha ending 2008 at 4.1% unemployment, and have projected the rate will increase to 4.9% by the end of 2009. With an estimated workforce of 466,000, that works out to about 3,000 more people being unemployed at the end of this year as compared to last year. That’s just fewer than 300 people a month. In contrast, in the past 30 days, 1,670 jobs in Omaha were posted on Monster and Career Builder combined.
This trend is true in a lot of cities I’ve been visiting. It was true in Las Vegas; it’s true in DC, even in Miami.
Take this theory and apply it to the national unemployment numbers: The US Department of Labor estimates our national workforce to be 154 Million people; 12.5M of which they estimate are unemployed. Understand that it’s easy to monitor new claims filed at the unemployment offices around the country. The way the tracking works, though, creates a build in lag time as people roll off unemployment, so those numbers are not tracked as accurately, if at all.
Those people who file for unemployment repeatedly are also falling into the new claimant statistics. This doesn’t necessarily get reported in the news lately.
Let’s turn our necks again to jobs being advertised. On a national level, in the past 30 days, 240,000 jobs were posted on Career Builder, according to Emily Wysocki, DC area Career Builder representative. Several representatives of Monster were unwilling to participate in this survey, but my staff researched and estimates 155,000 jobs were posted in the US in the past 30 days on their job board.
Overall, these numbers indicate the weekly availability of jobs being posted both online and on company websites in nearly every city we polled is outpacing the number of applicants filing for unemployment.
Yes, at the end of the day, more people are unemployed now than in the recent past, creating a more competitive marketplace than we’ve seen in most of our lifetimes. But, we also have a larger workforce than we’ve ever had, so that’s not as surprising as it might seem.
We are a service-based nation, and we are adaptable and innovative. Necessity is the mother of invention. Who’s to say that one of those unemployed people isn’t sitting in their garage as I type, having a few beers, discussing ideas with friends, and preparing them to possibly become the next Bill Gates?
For a list of on demand webinars relating to job searching, interviewing, and resume writing visit: http://www.carolynthompson.net/webinars.htm
Carolyn Thompson
Author of TEN EASY STEPS TO A PERFECT RESUME…available on Amazon.com!
and TEN STEPS TO FINDING THE PERFECT JOB…available on Amazon.com!
THANK YOU CAROLYN! Finally someone is pointing out the whole truth instead of just all the negatives and “scare tactics”. And wasn’t it just a year or less ago that we were worried about not having enough workers in the workforce to keep Social Security going? The government was so upset over this possibility that they were willing to look the other way regarding illegal aliens coming into the US. Well, that is a topic for another venue! Keep up the good work and continue letting us know what the real truth behind all the numbers really is!