Industries Still Hiring – Professions in Demand

March 10th, 2009 | Posted in Important Career

Help wanted: pharmacists, engineers and nurses. Believe it or not, even some banks are hiring, at least for their technology teams. While the recession has claimed 4.4 million jobs, the economy has created others, many of them for highly trained and specialized professionals. More than 2 million jobs openings now exist across a range of industries, according to government data.

Job seekers beware, though. An average of nearly five people are competing for each opening. That’s up sharply from a ratio of less than 2-to-1 in December 2007, when the recession was just starting and nearly 4 million openings existed.

Human resources executives say companies that are hiring are benefiting from a top-notch talent pool as applications pour in from a larger base of job seekers. The number of unemployed Americans has soared, to 12.5 million last month, from 7 million when the recession began. professionals.

Broadly, jobs are being added in education, health care and the federal government, the Labor Department said, with the government adding 9,000 new jobs last month alone.

But beyond those areas, jobs can be found in a variety of sectors. Some places that are hiring, such as companies that make nuclear power equipment, haven’t been hit that hard by the recession. Others, such as discount retailers, are actually benefiting from the downturn as shoppers turn thriftier.

Even some businesses at the center of the economic meltdown are managing to add a few employees. Banks involved in recent mergers, for example, are hiring information technology specialists to help integrate companies, said Tig Gilliam, chief executive of the Adecco Group North America, a human resources firm.

Some mortgage lending companies, notably those never involved in subprime or other exotic loans, are actually growing and hiring as larger competitors have folded.

“We’ve been busy,” said Terry Schmidt, chief financial officer of Guild Mortgage Co. in California, whose company has doubled in size, from around 450 to close to 900 employees, in the past year and a half.

The new hires originate home loans and process them, among other duties.

“We’re finding that the talent pool — the level of talent and experience — is much better than we’ve ever had,” Schmidt said.

Mortgage servicing companies — those that collect payments for the lenders that originated them — are also hiring as lower mortgage rates fuel mortgage refinance applications.

Marina Walsh, associate vice president of industry analysis at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said servicers “are just scrambling for workers.”

The nuclear power industry, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to have noticed the economic downturn. It is adding thousands of jobs as it gears up to build as many as 26 new nuclear power plants in the next decade.

Corporations such as Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Company and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy are hiring engineers and adding other workers as they expand manufacturing facilities, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group. (GE Hitachi is a partnership between General Electric Co. and Tokyo-based Hitachi Ltd.)

Engineers of all kinds are in demand and are facing a rock-bottom jobless rate of about 3 percent, according to Gilliam of the Adecco Group North America. That compares with a nationwide unemployment rate of 8.1 percent last month.

Adecco is trying to fill about 1,200 engineering jobs, Gilliam said. They include product engineers who test the next generation of computer equipment, he said.

Other bright spots in an otherwise dismal labor market:

• Pharmacists: An aging U.S. population is taking more medicine and pharmacists are taking more time helping patients with chronic diseases manage their dosages, said Douglas Scheckelhoff of the American Society of Health System Pharmacists.

There is a 6 percent shortage of hospital pharmacists, Scheckelhoff said, while many drug stores are also looking to hire new pharmacists and pharmacist technicians, he said.

• Nurses: Hospitals also need more nurses to care for the aging population and to replace those nearing retirement, said Cheryl Peterson, director of nursing practice and policy at the American Nurses Association. Hospitals added 7,000 jobs of all kinds last month, even as the economy overall shed 651,000.

• Veterinarians: “There’s a tremendous demand” for veterinarians, particularly to serve livestock growers in rural areas, said Dr. Ron DeHaven, chief executive officer of the American Veterinary Medical Association. The government is also short of veterinarians needed to inspect slaughterhouses and undertake other food safety measures, he said. The Labor Department projects that the number of veterinary jobs will grow by 35 percent by 2016, DeHaven said.

Some companies are benefiting from the recession as shoppers shift to lower-priced stores. The economy has lost more than 600,000 retail jobs since the slowdown began, but discount retailer Family Dollar Stores Inc. is hiring.

The company plans to hire new workers for 200 stores it expects to open this year, said spokesman Josh Braverman, and will also add employees at some of its nine distribution centers. Family Dollar saw its sales at stores open at least a year rise by 6.4 percent in the three months ending in February.

Other companies prospering amid the economic gloom include liquidators — firms that sell the assets of troubled businesses.

Bill Angrick, chief executive of Washington, D.C.-based Liquidity Services Inc., which operates the Web site Liquidation.com, said his company expects record profits for the first quarter. Among the items his company liquidates are vehicles and networking and communications equipment.

Julie Davis, a spokeswoman for the firm, said it has openings for at least 10 people in its sales, marketing, operations and finance departments.

“We are absolutely in hiring mode,” she said. The company employs about 700 people worldwide.

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Economics Writer
AP Business Writers Jeannine Aversa and Daniel Lovering contributed to this report.

One Major US City is Virtually Recession-Free

February 21st, 2009 | Posted in Finance Management

As the nation’s most populous metro area feels Wall Street’s pain, the fourth-largest — Washington — is barely sensing the recession. In fact, Moody’s Economy.com estimates that metro Washington’s economy will actually grow 2.5% from mid-2008 through mid-2010. New York’s economy is expected to shrink 4.2%.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Washington benefited from a national crisis. Back in 1930 the District of Columbia was a quiet Southern town, scoffed at by New York sophisticates. But as the federal government ramped up to fight first the Great Depression and then World War II, its population grew 65% in two decades, vs. just 14% for New York City.

This time Washington is getting a boost from government spending to fight the recession and fix the financial system, as well as the ongoing expenses of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and promoting homeland security. While President Barack Obama pointedly left Washington for Denver to sign the $787 billion stimulus package on Feb. 17, locals expect the metro area to garner a big share of the dollars.
Where Home Sales Rise

“Oversight alone will (mean) tons of new jobs,” enthuses Jill Landsman, a spokeswoman for the Northern Virginia Assn. of Realtors, who says the pace of home sales has picked up over the past year even as prices have continued to fall.

Job-seeking Wall Streeters who jump on Amtrak’s Acela to Washington may be dismayed to find that the maximum pay for an FDIC bank review examiner is close to $180,000. That’s great for most folks, but paltry next to the bonus-swelled compensation many bankers are used to. The pay can be a lot better, though, at the Beltway Bandit consulting firms that are ramping up to assist the FDIC, Treasury Dept., and others. Consulting jobs for senior specialists in finance “can pay north of $200 an hour,” says Andrew Reina, a practice director for risk consultant Ajilon Solutions.

Companies such as Computer Sciences Corp., Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, and Booz Allen Hamilton employ tens of thousands of people in the Washington area and continue to expand. Even before the current crisis, professional and business services, which include private-sector lawyers, accountants, engineers, and consultants, made up 21% of metro Washington’s annual economic output, even more than the 20% made up by government itself, according to a BusinessWeek estimate based on government data. The financial crisis “creates opportunities for companies like ours” to provide expert assistance, says David Booth, Computer Sciences Corp.’s president of global sales and marketing.
The New Talent Magnet

By at least one measure, it’s Washington rather than New York that’s attracting the best and brightest these days: According to George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, metro Washington leads the nation in the share of jobs that are in high-tech and the share of workers with advanced degrees.

As for New York, the mix — and the outlook — is bleak. Finance typically accounts for 32% of the metro region’s output, mostly because finance jobs pay so well. But pay limits, combined with job cuts, will harm everything from condos to car dealerships. New York State Labor Dept. analyst James Brown says, “There will still be a need for capital-raising, but it’s pretty clear the sector won’t be as profitable or as large.”

Adds Moody’s Economy.com economist Marisa Di Natale: “New York, we think, is going to have a pretty severe recession.”
Staging a Comeback?

In one measure of how dire things have gotten for New York’s finance sector, Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Feb. 18 announced a $45 million plan to retrain investment bankers, traders, and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street. The money will also provide startup money and office space for new businesses by the former Wall Streeters. According to The New York Times, city officials expect New York to lose 65,000 jobs in finance during this recession, and not gain them back any time soon.

“We say good luck to the people in New York. We know they’re going through some tough times,” says Arnold Punaro, general manager of SAIC’s Washington operations.

Then again, there is one resource that New York has in abundance, and that’s self-confidence. Regional Plan Assn. President Robert Yaro, whose nonprofit organization coordinates planning in a 31-county area, says New York has been declared dead over and over since the 1880s, but always springs back.

“The fundamental strength,” says Yaro, “is that every 24-year-old in America and the world wants to be here. Because every other place seems kind of sleepy.”

By Peter Coy, BusinessWeek.com