Demand For Workers Remain High, Particularly In These Areas.

Job openings provide employees more negotiation power, particularly in sectors where a company’s ability to fill positions successfully is essential to survival.

Both the need for workers and the capacity to fill openings are still very high. According to a recent OnlineU survey, there were over 11.5 million open positions in March 2022, up from 6.2 million two years prior (prior to the pandemic).

At 9.9% and 9%, respectively, the subsectors of lodging and food services, health care, and social assistance now have the greatest job vacancy rates. The Great Resignation may be a factor in the high rates, since employees are quitting their employment at a rate of 3% in March 2022 compared to 1.8 % in March 2021.

In its most recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover report, released in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated that on the final working day of March 2022, the job vacancy rate was 7.1 percent, a historical high. With a “quits rate” of 3 percent, there were 4.5 million quits in March, a historical high.

Contrast that to the identical BLS data from two years ago. The number of job openings decreased by 813,000 to 6.2 million on the last business day of March 2020, representing a vacancy rate of 3.9 percent. The number of resignations decreased to 2.8 million, down 654,000. According to the initial estimate, there were 1.8 percent quits because employees who had jobs preferred to keep them.

Along with the individuals looking (or not) for work, vacancy rates have also altered. In March 2020, just before the pandemic, fewer jobs were available overall than in February of the same year. Vacancies increased by 200,000 from February to March of this year.

The industries in the leisure and hospitality, mining and logging, manufacturing, and education/health and social support have the greatest ground to make up in order to return vacancy rates to pre-pandemic levels. In March 2020, the average private sector vacancy rate was 3.9 percent, and in March 2022, it was 7.5 percent.

The leisure and hospitality business continues to have the most to gain if it is to close the gap between its current vacancy rate of nearing 10% and its pre-pandemic record of less than 4%. This industry’s vacancy rate has increased by 5.8 percentage points since March 2020. It’s no secret that the hospitality industry was severely damaged and is now in a gradual recovery phase as a result of lockdowns, limited travel alternatives, and country vaccine requirements (although travel has picked up greatly since mandates have been lifted).

The arts and entertainment industries are linked to tourism and hospitality, yet they still have a relatively high vacancy rate. Accommodation and food services, a subsector that was heavily hit by the dramatic slowdown in dining and travel in the first year of the epidemic, experienced the highest losses and have the furthest to go to return to “normal.”

The second-largest difference between its vacancy rates in March 2020 and March 2022 was in the mining and logging sector. As of this March, the industry still needs to fill 40,000 positions. Particularly lumber businesses halted their operations during the start of the pandemic because they expected lower demand for their goods and didn’t want to accumulate large amounts of excess inventory.

Even though many Americans started utilizing their savings to make additions and renovations to their homes, many timber companies had already let go of their staff and were having problems getting them back for the subsequent surge in lumber demand.

It’s reasonable to assume that the 11.5 million open positions are good news for anyone searching for work, including students and recent grads. It implies that there are openings in every industry. Hotel employees, restaurants, and other businesses in particular industries would find it challenging to operate or exist if they were unable to recruit enough candidates to fill open positions.

This finally means that the bargaining position of the workforce has considerably increased. One doesn’t even need to change employment to get concessions from an employer because businesses are fighting hard to keep their best employees. Now is a great moment to be actively looking for a job and aggressively bargaining for the greatest possible pay, benefits, and bonuses because so many employers are practically desperate to fill positions.

Source: https://www.benefitspro.com/2022/07/06/demand-still-high-for-workers-especially-in-these-industries/