Business/Finance – Jobs. Trends. Insight.

S/D Ratios – A Closer Look at "General and Operations Managers"

By Charles Thibault on July 27, 2009 in Business/Finance.

WANTED's Supply/Demand Ratios measure Hiring Demand relative to supply of labor. Hiring Demand is measured relative to the number of qualified workers in a geographic area, on an occupation-by-occupation basis. Supply/Demand Ratios are centered around 100, with values greater than 100 signaling greater than average Hiring Demand for that occupation.

This week, we take a look at "General and Operations Managers", Standard Occupational Classification code 111021. According to the BLS there were almost 1,700,000 General and Operations Managers employed in the US in 2008. Even though it is not the most common occupation in terms of total employment, it carries the most economic weight. With an average yearly income of $107,970, more than $183 billion in wages are paid out every year to these managers, more than any other occupation.

Before jumping into geographical specifics, how have General and Operations Managers fared, generally speaking? After consistent upward trending in Hiring Demand for these managers in 2007, Hiring Demand softened throughout 2008. Since then, Hiring Demand has rebounded quite nicely and is growing again, according to WANTED Analytics 2.0.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Workers seeking General and Operations Manager positions within the top 20 US Marketsshould focus on New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, or even Miami. Some markets are quite weak, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houson, and Pheonix.

Hiring Demand Down 11% in June at Largest Financial Firms

By Juli Morris on July 21, 2009 in Business/Finance.

We reported last month that Hiring Demand at the ten major financial institutions repaying TARP funds was on the rise this Spring, with online job ads for these firms up 46 percent in May compared to February 2009, their first quarter low. These financial firms were granted permission by the Treasury in early June to begin repaying government-bailout funds received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Hiring Demand at the same ten financial firms declined 11 percent in June from its May level, remaining 35 percent higher than the February low.

Despite recent positive news in the sector, such as robust earnings reports from JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, as well as from firms like Bank of America and Citigroup, the sector faces continuing difficulties in the second half of 2009. Losses by regional banks on commercial real estate loans are expected to top $30 billion in 2009, and 57 have already failed this year.

Online job ads posted by J.P. Morgan Chase constitute 60 percent of the total number of new ads in June, with the largest concentration of job ads falling under the following categories: Tellers; Sales Agents, Financial Services; Financial Managers, Branch or Department; Personal Financial Advisers; Loan Officers; and Computer Specialists.

The ten financial institutions granted permission to begin repaying TARP funds are: J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp and BB&T Corp., American Express Co., Capital One Financial Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., State Street Corp. and Northern Trust Corp.

Finance Down 18,200 – June 2009 BLS Preliminary Report

By Juli Morris on July 2, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment, Business/Finance.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported a loss of 18,200 jobs in the Finance and Insurance sector for June, following a smaller-than-expected revised loss of 17,600 jobs reported by the BLS for May. WANTED Technologies' Hiring Demand Indicator (the yellow line in the chart below) for Financial Services showed a solid uptick in June, coming off of a three-year low in April.

Click chart to view full size

The Financial Services Hiring Demand Indicator–a measure of year-over-year change in online job advertising– rose for the second consecutive month, from -41 percent in May to a revised -37 percent in June. The trend in Hiring Demand in Financial Services had been moving steadily downward from a peak it reached in March 2007 prior to the onset of the recession in December 2007, reaching a bottom that appeared to occur in April at -48 percent.

As we previously reported, confidence seems to be building in this sector, with ten of the largest recipients of TARP funds starting to pay back those funds while experiencing their own rising Hiring Demand, and with Citigroup and other financial institutions planning to boost executive salaries as much as 50 percent to compensate for lost bonuses in 2008. Goldman Sachs is predicting its most profitable year ever, along with record bonuses.

FORECAST: June 2009 — Finance Down 16,000

By Juli Morris on June 24, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment, Business/Finance.

WANTED forecasts a loss of 16,000 jobs in the Finance and Insurance sector for June, the smallest loss for this sector since October 2008. This follows a smaller-than-expected loss of 19,300 jobs reported by the BLS for May. WANTED Technologies' Hiring Demand Indicator (the yellow line in the chart below) for Financial Services showed a solid uptick in June, coming off of a three-year low in April.

Click chart to view full size

The Financial Services Hiring Demand Indicator–a measure of year-over-year change in online job advertising– rose for the second consecutive month, from -41 percent in May to -36 percent in June. The trend in Hiring Demand in Financial Services had been moving steadily downward from a peak it reached in March 2007 prior to the onset of the recession in December 2007, reaching a bottom that appeared to occur in April at -48 percent.

Confidence seems to be building in this sector, with ten of the largest recipients of TARP funds starting to pay back those funds while experiencing their own rising Hiring Demand, and with Citigroup and other financial institutions planning to boost executive salaries as much as 50 percent to compensate for lost bonuses in 2008. Goldman Sachs is predicting its most profitable year ever, along with record bonuses.

Return to Normalcy: Bank of America (BAC) Hiring Demand Rebounds Sharply

By Bruce Murray on June 17, 2009 in Business/Finance, Employer Watch.

Bank of America's (BAC) Hiring Demand dropped sharply–along with that of other banks–during the unfolding financial meltdown last fall.

During that chaotic period BAC acquired Merrill Lynch and then apparently attempted to get out of the deal in a process that prompted a Congressional committee hearing last week. Along the way, it received $52.5 billion in TARP funds, the largest amount of any bank on the list of 615 institutions receving bail-out funds. Then this week, it was not among the 10 banks repaying $66.3 billion in TARP funds.

Bank of America Monthly Hiring Demand Rebounds

Nonetheless, it appears that the underlying business operations of the organization have returned to a level of normalcy when measured by the level of Hiring Demand. The chart to the left shows how the volume of job ads placed by BAC establishments fell by 75 percent from a peak of 24,618 in October, 2008 to just under 6,000 in January, 2009.

In May, BAC level of Hiring Demand has returned to almost 23,000 job ads, an apparent sign that BAC management believes the worst is over.

Meanwhile, today the Obama Administration announced a proposed overhaul of the regulations covering the financial sector. The debate has begun over whether these regulations have gone far enough to limit the size of financial institutions which became too big to fail.

Hiring Demand Up 46% at Largest Financial Institutions

By Juli Morris on June 12, 2009 in Business/Finance, Labor Market Dynamics.

This week, ten of the largest US financial institutions were granted permission by the Treasury to begin repaying government-bailout funds received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Along with the results of recent stress tests, this move is seen as a sign that the financial services industry has pulled back from the brink of collapse. There is not smooth sailing ahead for this sector, however:

While the collapse of the U.S. banking system is no longer seen as an imminent danger, access to the capital markets remains difficult and bank balance sheets are clogged with troubled loans and other assets. Most of the nation's 8,000 banks are being hammered by the recession, and the number of bank failures is expected to climb.

WANTED's hiring demand data suggests that a bit of optimism is warranted. Hiring demand at the ten major financial institutions repaying TARP funds has risen in each of the last 3 months. Online job ads for these firms were up 46 percent in May compared to February 2009.

Source: WANTED Analytics

The top occupational categories these firms are advertising for are Office and Administrative Support, Sales and Related, and Business and Financial Operations. The latter category includes Loan Officers, which we reported last week as showing an overall increase in hiring demand of 26.8 percent, compared to a year ago.

Recent Commentary on a "Jobless Recovery" (Updated)

By Bruce Murray on June 9, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment, Business/Finance, Health Care.

Some commentary worth noting that has appeared recently.

Calculated Risk looks at previous recessions and shows what a "jobless recovery" might look like. It also cites this assessment from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which posits the following:

"Specifically, we suggest that the relatively low level of temporary layoffs and high level of involuntary part-time workers make a jobless recovery similar to the one experienced in 1992 a plausible scenario."

Staffing giant Manpower released its employment survey for the third quarter of this year, which asks employers to describe their plans for staffing levels. The outlook for the July to September period is "stable", or, in other words, status quo, neither up or down significantly.

And on how this will look from the perspective of the typical job seeker, this, from the Wall Street Journal.

Despite indications that the worst monthly job declines are over, the road to recovery will be bumpy for the next year. Employers remain unsettled from a turbulent financial crisis. So many millions of people are out of work that absorbing them back into new jobs will take time. For the summer and fall, an improvement in the economy may not even be evident to most people out searching for jobs. After that, it'll be a long road back to the days of a tight labor market.

And finally, from Jeff Frankel, who sits on the National Bureau of Economic Research's committee that officially designates the beginning and ending of economic recessions and expansions.

Commenting on the recent release of May's smaller-than-expected loss of 345,000 jobs, Frankel points out that "total hours worked" for the same period declined at a rate of 0.7 percent. This reduction in the number of hours worked is consistent with an economy still in contraction. As Frankel says:

"Hours worked suggests that the hope-inspiring May moderation in the job loss series may have been a monthly aberration. If firms were really gearing up to start hiring workers once again, why would they now be cutting back as strongly as ever on the hours that they ask their existing employees to work? My bottom line: the labor market does not quite yet suggest that the economy has hit bottom."

Finance Down 19,300–May 2009 BLS Preliminary Report

By Juli Morris on June 5, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment, Business/Finance.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported a loss of 19,300 jobs in the Finance and Insurance sector for May, the smallest losses since October 2008. WANTED Technologies' Hiring Demand Indicator (the yellow line in the chart below) for Financial Services showed an uptick in May off of a three-year low last month.

Click chart to view full size

The Financial Services Hiring Demand Indicator–a measure of year-over-year change in online job advertising–rose from -48 percent in April to -41 percent in May. The trend in Hiring Demand in Financial Services had been moving steadily downward from a peak it reached in March 2007 prior to the onset of the recession in December 2007.

Within the NAICS code subcategories in the Financial sector, hiring demand data showed a tick upward in online job ads for the second consecutive month in NAICS 522, Credit Intermediation and Related Services–the banking industry. BLS reported a loss of 6,000 jobs in May, less than half the losses reported for April and the fewest jobs lost in this subsector since September 2008.
Read more »

Loan Officers Bright Spot for Financial Specialists

By Charles Thibault on June 2, 2009 in Business/Finance.

Click chart to view full size

Hiring demand for Financial Specialists is down 26% overall compared to the same period a year ago, and down 47% when looking at the three major national boards, according to WANTED Analytics™ 2.0. On a month-over-month basis, hiring demand has grown for the past three months, indicating a stabilization of hiring demand for these occupations. The worst year-over-year drop was 37%, experienced in mid-February 2009.

A bright spot for Financial Specialists is an increase in hiring demand for Loan Officers, up 26.8% compared to a year ago. When looking only at the three major national boards, demand for Loan Officers is down only 7%, which is still the best performance of the group.

SOC Code	SOC Title	Employment (May 2008)	% of 13-2000, Financial Specialists	YoY % Change, HDI	YoY % Change, HDI, Major National Boards
13-2000	Financial Specialists	2,470,440	100.0%	-26.2%	-46.8%
13-2011	Accountants and Auditors	1,133,580	45.9%	-41.2%	-52.4%
13-2072	Loan Officers	321,850	13.0%	26.8%	-7.0%
13-2051	Financial Analysts	236,720	9.6%	-42.1%	-51.9%

Hiring demand for Accountants and Auditors, which represent 45.9% of Financial Specialists with more than one million workers, is down 41.2% compared to the same period last year. Demand is down 52.4% for these occupations on the three national job boards.

Hiring demand for Financial Analysts, the third most important Financial Specialist in terms of total employment, is also down 42.1%. Demand for Financial Analysts is down 51.9% on the three major boards, quite similar to Accountants and Auditors.

Strengthening of hiring demand for Loan Officers may show a "return to normalcy" for this occupation following the mortgage collapse. The steep declines for Accountants and Auditors, as well as for Financial Analysts, however, point more towards a generalized malaise concerning the state of the economy.

FORECAST: May 2009 — Finance Down 32,000

By Juli Morris on May 28, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment, Business/Finance.

WANTED forecasts a loss of 32,000 jobs in the Finance and Insurance sector for May, a bigger loss than we've seen in the prior two months, although not as large as the February loss of 36,500 jobs. WANTED Technologies' Hiring Demand Indicator (the yellow line in the chart below) for Financial Services showed an uptick in May off of a three-year low last month.

Click chart to view full size

It is too early to celebrate, however, with major layoffs continuing in the sector. Last week, American Express announced it would eliminate 4,000 jobs, or 6 percent of its workforce, in an attempt to save $800 million in 2009.

« Older Entries

Newer Entries »