The Labor Department reported this morning that 161,000 jobs were created last month. This was the 73rd straight month of jobs creation! Additionally, September’s jobs figures were again revised upward to 191,000.
Strong Jobs And Wages Gains
The strong jobs numbers prompted Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities to say, “was not a shocker, but it was definitely on the strong side.” Also, jobs revisions added a total of 44,000 jobs to earlier payroll estimates for August and September. Hiring over the past three months averaged 176,000 a month. The overall pace of job creation has slowed in 2016, averaging 181,000 a month through October versus 229,000 for all of 2015.
October Job gains were broad based across most sectors of the economy. However, employment fell in industries including manufacturing, retail trade, and mining and logging.
Wages continued to rise as the labor market tightened and employers competed to hire and retain workers. Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose 10 cents from September, or 0.4%, to $25.92 in October. Economists had expected a 0.3% increase on the month.
A broad measure of unemployment and underemployment, known as the U-6, including Americans working part-time jobs who want full-time positions, was 9.5% in October, dropping from 9.7% from the prior month and reaching its lowest level since April 2008.
Rapider Jobs Creation In Scientific, Engineering, Technology Fields
Our internal engineer, science and technology recruitment teams, as well as most engineering, scientific and technical recruiting search professionals that we have surveyed over the past 90 days have noticed that job vacancies are continuing to soar. Technical recruiters are placing a new job advertisement almost every minute! This encompasses a wide range of staffing fields including online staffing requisitions for manufacturing, quality, process, science, engineering, construction, design, development and other technical jobs.
AI And Robotics Recruiting Even More Intense!
Over the past eighteen months, all six of Strategic Search Corporation’s recruitment divisions have received increasing staffing inquiries about cutting edge scientists, engineers and technical professionals who can develop futurist artificial intelligence algorithms, hardware and systems. That is why I was contacted recently to be a guest on WGN TV’s sister station CLTV to discuss AI hiring trends, future developments and problems associated with the spread of artificial intelligence.
Demand for key artificial intelligence experts far exceeds supply. As a result, companies like Uber, Google and Apple have been increasingly raiding educational institutions like Carnegie Mellon as well as each other to recruit key scientists, engineers, R&D, IT and technical professionals!
Artificial intelligence is currently being adopted for many applications. The VR (Virtual Reality) craze of Pokémon is an offshoot of AI. So are the vision systems that allow you to “see” all blind spots while backing up your car.
Need To Be More Realistic With Your Recruiting Requirements
Unfortunately, many hiring managers seem unaware that demand far outstrips supply for most engineering, scientific and technical staffing vacancies. Therefore, my technical recruiting tip is to be more realistic in your staffing requests. Many companies demand unrealistic job requirements. As a result, positions go unfilled for long periods of time, resulting in many thousands of dollars in lost productivity and innovation!
Instead, I recommend that hiring managers should only focus on only the 2-3 most important job criteria. Especially, with innovative fields like AI and robotics, recruiters have to be more realistic during their staffing process. To help with this I provided a short job recruiting tip. Please click on #12 below to view.
