Gallup Economy (06/06/12) Lymari Morales

Gallup’s U.S. Job Creation Index was at +19 in May, compared with +20 in April and +18 in March, providing a largely steady assessment of the U.S. job creation picture over the period in which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found job creation weakening. The U.S. Job Creation Index score of +19 for May reflects 35% of workers nationwide saying their employers are hiring workers and expanding the size of their work force, and 16% saying their employers are letting workers go and reducing the size of their work force. Gallup’s job creation measure does not reveal a significant change in May versus April and March. This means workers themselves did not perceive much change in hiring at their workplaces, even as the government found far fewer actual jobs being created.

Gallup also finds U.S. economic confidence and consumer spending holding at higher rates over the past three months. Taken together, the Gallup findings suggest Americans’ overall economic attitudes and behaviors remained slightly improved in March, April, and May, but did not get much better. Next month’s reports will reveal whether the May BLS jobs report has any negative impact.

Bloomberg (06/06/12) Michelle Jamrisko

Even as confidence in the U.S. economy wanes, companies in the U.S. intend to increase hiring, according to a quarterly survey of chief financial officers by Duke University and CFO Magazine. The index of executives’ confidence declined from 59 in the first quarter to 56 in the second quarter. However, the executives said they plan to boost hiring by 2.5% over the next year, up from 2.1% in the previous survey. “CFOs indicate a level of hiring that would reduce the national unemployment rate to near 7% within a year, if all else remains constant,” says Kate O’Sullivan, CFO Magazine’s editorial director. “More than one out of four U.S. CFOs say their employees are maxed out, so the planned increase in payrolls is long overdue.”

Network World (06/06/12) Ann Bednarz

A Dice.com poll of 800 information technology-focused hiring managers and recruiters found 73% plan to increase hiring in the second half of the year compared with the first six months of 2012, an increase from six months ago when 65% said they planned to increase hiring. Approximately one-quarter (24%) said the time it takes to fill positions has shortened compared with last year, while 45% reported extended hiring times, due in part to an inability to find qualified professionals.

IT professionals of all experience levels are in demand, though hiring managers and recruiters reported different search priorities. Companies recruiting for their own needs are most likely to focus on technical professionals with two to five years in the work force, slightly edging out those with six to 10 years of experience. Staffing companies and recruiters, meanwhile, tend to be searching for more experienced professionals with six to 10 years of tenure.

Wall Street Journal (06/06/12) Lauren Weber

Companies are expected to spend $5.75 billion on online recruitment in 2012, and their outlays could climb to as high as $10.4 billion by 2016 if the weak job market recovers to normal levels, according to market-research firm Borrell Associates Inc. Web-based job-hunting tools have left human resource departments with too many résumés and have given job seekers the sense that applying online is a waste of their time. Technology firms of all sizes are trying to develop software that can read résumés intelligently, flagging a handful of truly promising candidates to recruiters, and alerting job seekers to openings that are specifically targeted to their skills and background.

Pioneering online job boards such as the ones developed by ASA corporate partners Monster.com and CareerBuilder are also rushing to reposition themselves with social-media apps and search algorithms designed to sort résumés in a more nuanced way than the original keyword-based model. Monster.com is staking its future on a version of semantic search called 6Sense, used in its SeeMore and Power Resume Search products. The second approach works like online dating services, requiring job seekers and sometimes recruiters to fill out detailed profiles or questionnaires about their goals so that the software can suggest potential matches.

“If you create tools that allow recruiters to spend more quality time with a smaller number of high-quality people, that’s valuable,” says Michael Pope, founder of San Francisco recruiting firm Captain Recruiter. But that tool first needs to earn the trust of job seekers, recruiters and employers. So far, he notes, “there isn’t anybody that tries to empower all three sides at once to be more effective.”

Workforce Management (06/12)

LinkedIn is the most popular social media site for posting jobs, according to a new report from Bullhorn Inc., a software-as-a-service provider for recruitment. Approximately 77% of job openings are shared on LinkedIn, followed by Twitter at 54%, and Facebook at 25%. The study also found that 21% of jobs are posted to all three social networks and that the same percentage of jobs are not posted to social media sites at all.

Wanted Analytics (06/06/12) Abby Lombardi

During May 2012, more than 238,000 online job listings included requirements for project management skills, an 11% increase compared with May 2011 and more than 51% compared with May 2010. As companies increasingly migrate to new technologies, information technology-related jobs most commonly require project management experience and represent 41% of all jobs that include this specification. The five metropolitan areas with the highest volume of online job ads requiring project management skills were New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Investor’s Business Daily (06/05/12) David Hogberg

While the jobless rate officially stands at 8.2%, actual employment rates of core working age Americans suggest the true jobs situation is even worse. From mid-1987 until the recent recession, the employment-to-population ratio of 25- to 54-year-olds usually ranged from 78.5% to 80%. It never fell below 78.2% even during the 1990-91 and 2001 slumps. Now, three years after the recession ended in June 2009, that ratio stands at just 75.7%.

“This is probably a better measure than the unemployment rate,” says James Sherk, senior policy analyst in labor economics at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “There are so many people dropping out of the job market and the unemployment rate, bad as it is, doesn’t pick that up. The ratio gives a better idea of employment opportunities.” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, says the employment-to-population ratio “sidesteps a lot of structural issues, like baby-boomers retiring. You are looking at prime-age workers and it gives you a better sense of the weakness in our current job market.” In the past few months the core employment-to-population ratio has improved, rising from 74.8% in October 2011 in part due to an unseasonably warm winter.

CBS News (06/05/12) Suzanne Lucas

The Harvard Business Review indicates that 58% of companies expect to employ temporary workers during the next few years, and not just in low-level jobs. The report says high-level temporary workers will earn incomes similar to those of employees or partners, especially if they have specialized skills that are in high demand. Some of these so-called “supertemps” are women with high levels of education and plenty of experience who want both a family and a career. Although temporary employment offers employers flexibility and even cost savings, companies could face the risk of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service retroactively classifying independent contractors as employees. For temporary workers, the lack of health insurance coverage and the need to search for a new position every few months pose some challenges.