Little improvement expected in US job market

The
employment market in the US is not set to recover before the end of the year at
the earliest, according to a survey of HR professionals in America.

The
research, jointly conducted among 538 HR professionals and 591
employees/jobseekers by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and
CareerJournal.com, predicts little improvement in the US job market. 

Most
jobseekers (57 per cent) and HR professionals (68 per cent) believe that since
January 2002, the job market has generally not improved or has remained the
same. Jobseekers (24 per cent) were considerably more pessimistic than HR
professionals (8 per cent) in believing that the job market had not improved at
all since January.

For
the remainder of this year, however, 40 per cent of employees/jobseekers were
hopeful that the market would generally improve, while 44 per cent of HR
professionals thought that it would remain the same. This perception was
reiterated when 61 per cent of HR professionals said their organisation would
not increase hiring over the next six months, adding credibility to the claim
that the US is in the midst of a "jobless recovery".

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SHRM
president and CEO Susan Meisinger said: "The lack of confidence exhibited
in the job market for the rest of the year should warn us that job recovery is
expected to remain stagnant and jobseekers will, most likely, have difficulty
finding new employment opportunities."

By Ben Willmott