The Job Market Is Over, Under, Sideways, Down

Where's the job market headed? Just ask The Yardbirds, and they just might answer you with one of their greatest hits from the '60s, "Over Under Sideways Down." And they'd be right. According to data from several sources we're either over the recession, under the pall of it still, or looking sideways to healthy job markets elsewhere, and against this backdrop, employees are feeling down in key markets.

First, we have the "over" part, an indication that the long-awaited end to the recession is indeed upon us: According to data from global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., after a 61 percent increase in March, the number of planned job cuts announced by American employers fell sharply in April to 38,326. This was 43 percent fewer than the 67,611 layoffs from the previous month. The April job-cut figure is the lowest since July 2006 (37,178), the associated press announcement notes, and comes just two months after the previous low of 42,090 in February. The implication is that this is a trend heralding an end to the recession.

But then, elsewhere, we encounter job posting-related data for the same month suggesting that we're nevertheless "under" the pall of a poor hiring environment still: In a press announcement, LinkUp, a job search engine that indexes only jobs found on over 22,000 company websites around the country, reports that new job listings on company websites dropped by 27,474 (-6%) in April, while total job openings published on company websites fell by 60,567 (-7%). Equally as alarming, 32 states (and Puerto Rico) showed declines in new job listings, while 33 (as well as both Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico) showed a drop in total job listings.

Some of the good news leads us "sideways," across the Pacific Ocean to employee pay developments in Hong Kong, where more than nine out of 10 companies have given their employees a pay rise in 2010, according to the annual survey by the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resources Management. Salary increases average 1.7 per cent, finds the survey, which also indicates that 93.3 per cent of companies interviewed increased pay in January 2010 compared to 31.1 per cent in January 2009.

Capping off the climate, and perhaps as a reaction to the apparently schizophrenic nature of today's job market, employees in key, once-stalwart markets are feeling "down." Employee confidence in the UK has dropped 8.8% in the first quarter of 2010, according to the latest figures from a quarterly study by Kenexa. This fall means that the UK now has the lowest level of employee confidence in Europe. Kenexa’s quarterly study, which measures the degree of confidence employees have in their employers’ marketplace competiveness and their own careers, involves over 15,500 employees in 12 countries (Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, the UK and the United States). In March 2010, the global employee confidence index score was 93.8, a decrease from the fourth quarter 2009 (98). China (99.8), Italy (98.6) and Canada and Brazil (97.5) reported the highest levels of employee confidence, while France (92.2), Japan (91.8) and the United Kingdom (91, down from 99.8) reported the lowest levels.

Where's the silver lining? Next week's Data Watch (residing at TMT, as well) will attempt to discern the answer.