CareerBuilder Job Forecast Finds Best Hiring Outlook in a Decade for 2017

Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn

Two in five employers – 40 percent – plan to hire full-time permanent employees over the next 12 months while three in 10 employees expect to hire part-time permanent staff, making the hiring outlook for 2017 the best the U.S. has seen in a decade, according to CareerBuilder’s annual job forecast.

The job forecast found the number of employers planning to hire full-time permanent staff increased from 36 percent in 2016 to 40 percent in 2017. Employers in information technology were the most likely to say they were hiring new employees at 56 percent, a 12 percentage point gain over 2016.

In terms of part-time employment, the job forecast found that 30 percent of employers expect to increase their number of part-time permanent employees in 2017, up from 26 percent last year. Among key trends shaping the job seeker experience in the coming year are the following five issues:

• Two-thirds of employers – 66 percent – plan to increase salaries on initial job offers while 30 percent of all employers will increase it by 5 percent or more. Nearly half of employers – 47 percent – expect to increase the minimum wage at their organizations and 44 percent of these employers will increase it by $3 or more while 20 percent will increase it by $5 or more.
• When evaluating who they will hire in 2017, 62 percent of employers rated the candidate’s “soft skills” associated with one’s personality such as positive attitude, team-oriented, or dependable as very important.
• Employers will communicate with candidates via text as 41 percent of them said they will follow a recent trend and reach out to candidates via text messages to schedule interviews.
• Workers in general will need to become more savvy on social media as 63 percent of employers said they expect employees across job functions to have some experience with social media.
• More companies will be open to hiring workers who are short on experience as 55 percent of employers said they will train workers who don’t have experience in their field and hire them in 2017.

“Three in four employers reported that they are in a better financial position than they were a year ago, which is instilling more confidence in adding people to their payrolls,” Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder and co-author of ‘The Talent Equation,’ stated in a press release about the job forecast.

The national survey of 2,391 hiring managers and human resources professionals from across industries and company sizes was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder from November 16 to December 6, 2016. An infographic of the annual job forecast is at https://cb.com/JobForecast2017.

CareerBuilder is the only end-to-end human capital management company covering the entire candidate lifecycle and employee lifecycle for businesses. CareerBuilder and subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, South America, Canada and Asia. To learn more, visit www.careerbuilder.com.

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