Walmart Increases Hourly Pay for Half a Million Workers The holiday season is almost upon us, and with it comes the annual ‘battle for holiday labor’ for the usual retail big guns. Walmart announced the organization is increasing hourly wages by at least $1 for 565,000 associates. The increase will be effective September 25 and will raise the hourly rate to $16.40. Front-end, food and consumable, and general merchandise will all get the new bump. And…they’re also forecasting a hiring boom of 20,000 additional part and full-time supply chain workers to support the upcoming holiday season. Hiring events start this month and open roles include freight handlers, lift drivers, order fillers, technicians, and managers. The average pay for a supply chain associate is $20.37 per hour. Dollar General Reaches Goal of 50K Hires More than 50,000 employees have been hired since mid-July, but the company isn’t stopping there.  Job opportunities in distribution centers, stores, and [...]

A Widening Skills Gap Looms for Workers More than half of respondents to a recent poll stated they’re concerned about their future status as an employee due to a skills gap. If their current employer offered skills training, 45% of workers would stick around longer. When asked which soft and hard skills were most needed, workers listed technology, computer and occupation-specific training (credentials and licenses) for hard skills and managerial leadership, communication, problem-solving and critical thinking were tops for soft skills. Higher Base Salaries Over Signing Bonuses In 2021, 50% of employers are offering signing bonuses, but only 20% plan to continue to do so by the end of the year. Instead, 62% of organizations responding stated that an increase in base salaries will be the focus over the next six months to attract both salaried and hourly employees. Clarity and Growth Opportunities for the Win Almost half (47%) of survey respondents stated that roles [...]

Have Bonus, Will Travel This trucking company is guaranteeing every newly hired driver a $15,000 sign-on bonus that will be paid out within 18 months (with over half in the first 6 months) In addition, drivers who sign on by October 1 can earn up to $20,000 in incentives This Degree Was Made for Earning… New college graduates (class of 2020) had an average starting salary of $55,260 This was an increase of 2.5% from 2019 ($53,889) and up 8.5% from 2018 ($50,944). Open to New Opportunities More than half (55%) of those in the U.S. are leaning toward considering a new job in the next year That increases as the age decreases – 63% of millennials and 77% of Gen Zers plan to take a look around for new opps Many with salaries less than $40k expect to be on the hunt Can’t Hold Me Down Over 51 million workers were contingent in the [...]

The Waiting Game Roles in the Project Management, Research, and Engineering fields are top of the list for slowest-to-hire, with a median time to hire of 47-49 days. The quickest to fill? Roles in customer service, accounting, auditing, and administration with a median time to hire of 33-37 days. Staffing Firms Forecast Double Digit Annual Revenue Growth Per the “State of the Staffing Nation” report from Sense, over 50% of staffing firms expect between 10% and 30% annual revenue growth in 2021 over 2020. A tiny 2.3% of firms expect no growth at all. Almost 20% (18.6%) expect revenue growth of over 40%. The report also found that 66% of firms named “time-to-fill” as the most important performance metric to watch over the next year. U.S. Jobless Claims Reach a New Low When looking at the week ended August 14, U.S. jobless claims hit a new pandemic low. Claims were down 29,000 to reach 348,000 [...]

The headlines are everywhere, reporting a surge in COVID-19 cases nationwide. With that comes a high demand for healthcare workers. It's not only the active cases of the pandemic causing the strain on healthcare talent. Exhaustion and burnout are playing a role too. Searches for nurse practitioners are up 24% year-over-year per a recent report. In addition to telehealth services, NPs are sought after to staff urgent care centers and outpatient clinics. The average salary for these roles is about $140,000, an increase of 12% year-over-year. The second most-recruited role is family physicians (average salary of $243,000). However, only 18% of search engagements were for this role, down from 20% the year prior and 22% before that. The highest average salary tracked for physicians in this report? Interventional Cardiologists at $611,000. Texas needs around 6,500 travel nurses due to a drastic increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations as well as worker exhaustion/burnout. Louisiana and Florida as well [...]

A more than encouraging jobs report came out today – jobs growth crushed all expectations with an addition of 943,000 jobs! That’s the most new payrolls in almost a year. The unemployment rate also continues to go in the right direction, falling from 5.9% to 5.4%. Such a great report – we’ll keep an eye on performance as the Delta variant expands.     Pay increases continue as way for U.S. employers to attract talent and KEEP talent – looking forward at 2022, an average increase of 3% for executives, management, and professional employees/support staff is forecasted. At an average of 2.8%, production and manual labor employees are also to see an increase in wages – above this year’s 2.5%. Who had the highest projected increases? The lucky ones in ‘high-tech’ and pharmaceutical sectors. The lowest? Oil and gas as well as leisure. Fancy a change? Over half of active job seekers (60%) have considered [...]

Project managers, it’s your time to shine! Per a recent report (thanks Business Talent Group), project management is the most in-demand skill for 2021. Following behind in the second slot is market landscape and research. When seeking these top skills in candidates, companies are looking to ‘drive critical workstreams and transformations to explore new business and product pipelines’. Here’s the list of the 10 most in-demand skills based on the number of requests for each skill over the past 12 months: Project management Market landscape and research Organizational design and workforce planning Growth strategy Process optimization and transformation Corporate and business unit strategy Market access and value Strategic planning Advanced analytics Program management office   It's All About the Long-Game The top two concerns for U.S. businesses in Q3 2021 are hiring and retention. (thanks to a survey from West Monroe Partners) 77% of respondents also stated that they planned on hiring more workers in [...]

Things are looking up, everyone. A recent survey found that over half of senior managers in the U.S. plan on adding new (permanent) positions in the back half of 2021. An additional 48% are still planning on filling empty roles or bringing back furloughed employees - HAPPY DANCE! The three areas looking at the most hires? 1.) Admin support - 58% 2.) Technology - 56% 3.) Marketing - 54% Along with all of this happy news comes some obstacles. Sorry folks, it can't be all wine and roses (though, we ask, why not? sigh.) The biggest recruiting challenges are as follows: 1.) finding those elusive candidates with the necessary skills 2.) getting the hire in the door quickly (gotta get the best talent before someone else does!) 3.) hiring candidates who are a match for the company culture It's All About the Benjamins...Not Always So what are some incentives that organizations are using to lure [...]

We blinked and seasonal hiring season is just about here. If you remember, in 2020 the US holiday season posted better-than-expected retail sales growth. During December 2020 retail sales were up 8.6% unadjusted year-over-year (per NRF, National Retail Federation). As the pandemic swelled, people flocked to their devices for online shopping...and shipping. For 2021? eMarketer is forecasting an increase of 2.7% (to $1.093 trillion) of US holiday retail sales. Yep, this holiday season is shaping up to be a strong one - ecommerce sales are forecasted to increase 11.3% (t0 $206.88 billion), achieving a record 18.9% of total holiday season retail sales. The economy continues to gain its footing across industries and roles supporting the upcoming holiday rush are no different. Employers are releasing their hiring plans and recruiting has begun in earnest. For some, these hourly roles will turn into solid full-time positions with benefits. For others, the power of a contingent workforce for [...]

New Job Posting: Superhero Needed to Help Shifting Talent Acquisition Market 😉   We called it. Our own Chief Product Officer, Stacey Steiger, speaking with Vadim Liberman (editor, TLNT and ERE) and Madeline Laurano (Founder, Aptitude Research) a few months ago in our webinar, “Contingent Workforce Management: You Have Better Options” said, “A lot of you are feeling pretty tapped out right now. Here’s the kicker though: there’s an impending hiring tsunami, it’s not a wave, we believe it’s a tsunami and it’s coming as the labor market starts to rev back up and companies that have been holding back on hiring are gonna say, ‘go’. We’re watching our platform right now and we’re already seeing the lift-off start to happen, watching increasing job volume, and we think it’s going to be a doozy.” Turns out we were right. A doozy it is. Chew on this: in April 2021 266,000 jobs were added to the [...]