The US employment market 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
and jobseekers by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and
CareerJournal.com, predicts little improvement in the US job market.
HR professionals (68 per cent) and most jobseekers (57 per cent) believe the
jobs market has not improved or has remained the same since January.
Jobseekers (24 per cent) were considerably more pessimistic than HR
professionals (8 per cent) in believing that the jobs market had not improved
at all. For the remainder of this year, however, 40 per cent of
employees/jobseekers were hopeful that the market would improve, while 44 per
cent of HR professionals thought it would remain static.
Adding credibility to the claim that the US is in the midst of a ‘jobless
recovery’, 61 per cent of HR professionals expected no increase in hiring over
the next six months.
SHRM president Susan Meisinger said: "The lack of confidence in the job
market for the rest of the year should warn us that job recovery is expected to
remain stagnant and jobseekers will have difficulty finding new employment
opportunities."
