Welcome to the January 6, 2010 issue of The Total View

Published by Success Performance Solutions

Major Sponsor of
2008 Best Places to Work In Pennsylvania

Edited and Written by Ira S. Wolfe

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Visit our Human Resources Blog and Perfect Labor Storm Blog where we can post daily (and more often) human resource updates, news, and Perfect Labor Storm facts. 

What's Inside this issue of The TotalView:

1.  6 Reasons to Cheer the Jobs Outlook for 2010

2.  Perfect Labor Storm Warnings

1.  6 Reasons to Cheer the Jobs Outlook for 2010

(Previously posted on Workforce Trends, January 4, 2010)

The year 2009 was definitely a smorgasbord of bad news for the pessimist. The American spirit - entrepreneurial, hard-working, innovative - was battered.

John Maxwell once said, "The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails."  If Maxwell is correct, then the pessimists had a lot of wind in their sails!  

I'm confident that for those leaders willing and able to adjust their sails, sales in 2010 can reach new heights. But serious challenges remain. Without question we'll experience a few more bumps on the path to a "new normal." 

Political and business pundits will feast on the paradox of a growing economy with sustained high employment and skilled worker shortages. How will the politicians and media make sense of this? The debate will be rancorous and passionate.  

Despite all the background noise, here are my top six predictions for 2010.

#1. Small business will lead the hiring rebound.  Unlike the economic recoveries in the past, we won't see wholesale re-hiring of tens of thousands of people by a single company. In fact, only 5.8 million of the 25 million businesses in the United States have employees, and just 650,000 of those have at least 20 employees. Instead of seeing one company re-hire 10,000 laid-off employees as we did in the past, watch for 10,000 small businesses to hire one employee. New start-ups and small business will be the lifeblood of our future economy. As I mentioned earlier, small business hiring has already started.

#2. Labor shortages will return. Many new jobs will require different skills than the ones we had in the past. With unemployment hovering around 10%, a lot of talented people are on the street these days. But there are plenty of job seekers who can't blame their misfortunes entirely on the bad economy. They are simply under-skilled and out-numbered. That will keep unemployment high but talent scarce The tricky part for many employers will be figuring out which ones were victims of a bad economy and which ones have the skills of a typist trying to use the Internet. The recession lulled many employers into believing The Perfect Labor Storm was more fiction than fact. But for the past two years, we merely moved into the eye of the storm. The struggle to find qualified candidates will return with a vengeance in 2010 and get more intense throughout the decade.

#3.  Productivity will continue to climb, thanks to a combination of more automation, judicious out-sourcing, and more diligent management oversight. Don't be surprised to see a few near-record productivity quarters over the next 2 years. Employers will continue to tweak the balance between labor and automation, outsourcing and in-house hiring, temporary and permanent, cost-cutting and investment. They will push fewer workers to do more. Expect hiring to be steady but slow as increased demand is satisfied initially by technology and temporary placements...and squeezing employees to become more efficient and resourceful. That will only increase the demand for talent because many workers just don't have the capacity to deal with the pace and complexity of today's workplace.

#4. Free-agency, freelancing, and independent contracting will become acceptable - and desirable - career paths.  Many unemployed Americans won't return to traditional corporate jobs. Tired of being pawns, they will instead become independent contractors, piecing together freelance work to create the equivalent of full-time jobs. This type of career, once the emblazoned insignia of Gen X, now fits the lifestyle quirks of Baby Boomers and Gen Y too. This will only add to the pressure of employers who want to recruit highly skilled full time workers. Commitment and loyalty to one job - one company will be almost as challenging to find as the skills to do the work. In addition, Baby Boomers who no longer can or want to retire will reinvent themselves in second careers. Businesses will need to re-write their recruitment, retention, and management protocols.

#5. The virtual workplace will further transform Main Street. For some businesses the thought of lower fixed costs is giving the work-from-home movement some serious fuel. For others, telecommuting gives any business, regardless of size and geography, access to the very best talent. And with nearly every generation of workers - from Gen Y to Baby Boomers - looking for flexibility and balance in their lives, working remotely has tremendous appeal. Cloud computing technology like Microsoft's Sharepoint and Google Apps, remote access software like GoToMyPC, and phone system solutions like Grasshopper and Ring Central make it easy and affordable to collaborate, connect, and compute from near and far.

#6 Employee turnover will jump dramatically, especially among specialized and highly skilled employees. This includes experienced executives with proven track records who will be in high demand. Gen X, whose careers have been stalled by the gray ceiling, will jump ship rather than work in the shadows of the unable-or- unwilling -to-retire Baby Boomers.  Many employers will also push the doing-more-with-less theme too far. Employees, burned and stressed out, will quickly jump ship knowing that the job they are filling isn't the only game in town anymore. Turnover will skyrocket for hourly employees in healthcare, technology, and sales. These three sectors, primed for exponential growth over the next decade, have been lulled into complacency during the recession. Expect employee poaching to reach record levels as the economy recovers. By mid-2011, I expect to see the recruitment of skilled workers to reach an intensity reminiscent of the dot-com years and 2005-2006.

2.  Perfect Labor Storm Warnings   

Subscribe to the Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 blog and receive skilled worker shortage updates like this:

 

Baby Boom Generation workforce participation will shrink from 44% in 2006 to 38% in 2011.

 

Generation X workforce participation will shrink from 33% in 2006 to 32% in 2011.

 

Millennial (Gen Y) Generation workforce participation will increase from 15% in 2006 to 25% in 2011, a 66% increase.

Learn more about workforce trends. Purchase the NEW Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 books (soft and hard cover versions) at PerfectLaborStorm.com.

New Perfect Labor Storm videos added. Watch now!

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