Granted, it’s a bit early to know for sure, but it looks as if 2017 may be shaping up to be a stellar year for finding a new job. LinkedIn’s recently released March Workforce Report says January and February were the strongest consecutive months for hiring since August and September 2015, perhaps yet another indicator that the economy is on the rise under a Republican administration.
Hiring across the U.S. this past February, LinkedIn said, was 1.4 percent higher than in February 2016. Seasonally adjusted hiring, which excludes such seasonal variations as companies hiring fewer people in December because of the holiday season, declined 1.3 percent compared to January, but “remains quite strong,” the report noted — adding that such hiring in Houston has risen “by a whopping 51 percent since June 2016,” which was the low point of the oil and energy sector’s recession.
LinkedIn certainly provides a good measure of the nation’s workforce activity: The professional networking site boasts the profiles of more than 133 million workers in the United States; more than 20,000 companies in the country use the site to recruit workers; and, more than 3 million jobs are posted on LinkedIn in the U.S. each month.
In speaking to the January and February job numbers, LinkedIn admitted:
Two months doesn’t make a trend, but it seems like the stronger hiring is being driven by elevated business confidence due to the new administration’s promises to lower taxes and reduce regulations.
The report, which is divided into U.S. and city sections, also offers these key insights and tools:
- “Rust Belt to Sun Belt migration” continues to grow, as it has since the 1960s, but the attraction of the Northwest continues to soar, causing LinkedIn to wonder if the migration trend should be called “rust belt to sun and rain belts.” Seattle in the March report showed a gain of 74.2 workers per 10,000 LinkedIn members, the most of any city, followed by Austin, Denver and Portland with gains of 68, 66.8 and 65.6 workers per 10,000, respectively.
- The top 10 U.S. city reports can be used to determine which skills are most scarce in those cities and which jobs are open, for someone who may be pondering a move. You’ll see that Microsoft jobs are understandably plentiful in Seattle, for example, but that if you’re in healthcare management, sales or education, these jobs are scarce and you may want to follow all of the others who are moving to the Emerald City. Dallas in the Sun Belt, meanwhile, boasts plenty of telecommunications workers (the Cowboys’ stadium is named after AT&T, a top employer there, after all) plus oil and gas workers. But it, too, sorely needs healthcare managers, followed by personnel in non-profit work and the mental health and psychology sectors.
- Nationally, the most scarce service-industry skills are in healthcare management and education and teaching. Workers with healthcare management skills – think primary care, medical billing and health education – are tough to find in nine of the 10 top big cities. And workers with education and teaching skills, such as lesson planning, lecturing and e-learning, are short in supply in six of the 10.
