Why a recession won’t affect the job market

Penelope Trunk over at The Brazen Careerist put together a pretty interesting post the other day about how our currently unstable economy is affecting the job market—or not.

Penelope argues that the state of today’s job market is not so much a function of economic indicators as it is of demographic trends. This is nothing we haven’t discussed before.  Baby boomers’ mass exodus from the workforce is resulting in a major shortage of employees that Gen X and Y are incapable to fill. (Penelope attributes this to Gen X’s focus on family and Gen Y’s fascination with entrepreneurship that lead them to contribute fewer hours of work per person than the boomers.)

Whether the economy enters a recession or not, as long as boomers continue to retire, demand for younger workers will be high. This is true even for sectors such as finance, real estate and manufacturing that are often hit hardest by economic downturns.

We’d like to add another area in which we expect to see high demand: technology. As we recently reported, the Q4 Yoh Index of Technology Wages revealed all-time high wages in the tech sector before gradually slowing at the end of 2007, and showed a continuing trend of year-over-year growth. And opportunities in engineering, Java, SAP®, project management, security and customer-related projects continue to be plentiful.

So don’t let talk of a recession scare you (when it comes to jobs, at least) -   retiring baby boomers will guarantee demand. But it’s up to you to sharpen your skills, maintain your credentials and make yourself an ideal and indispensable candidate.

Posted by Christy H.

Comments

[karen m]

So often I see this alleged oh the boomers Are retiring, and oh there is a problem with regards to a recession, but yet with very little data and information.

1 - There are 1 MILLION Less jobs that were added to the economy in 2007 - than there was in 2006 - that is More than Half the number of jobs - Every year we have More People ENTERING the Workforce, than we have Jobs for them..

2- Generation Y makes up a LARGER demographic population than Boomers - by the Mass Millions, and the last boomer is Not expected to Retire until 2037 - wow, by then Gen y's kids will have entered into the market

3- 85 Percent of boomers are not retiring which is Affecting the workforce

4 - we have more jobs being given to foreign entities and H1 rather than given to qualified talent.. thus we are unreasonably displacing our own workers

5 - AS LONG as salaries continue to fall, 4 times in the last 5 years, we can determine that there Is NOT and is Going to be a War for talent

THE RECESSION which started last year HAS ALREADY affected employment..

People Please LOOK at the Payroll numbers.. Jobs Per thousand ! those are the ONLY Accurate information that one should use to determine the job market crisis

Karen Mattonen