Growing War for Talents Looms as U.S. Economy Continues to Recover
Manpower Inc., world leader in innovative workforce solutions, has warned that continuing high levels of unemployment are coupled with large numbers of unfilled job vacancies. The January U.S. jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the economy created 36,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell by 0.4 of a percentage point to 9%.
Manpower announced at the 2011 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting that the world has entered a new age, where employers will be awakened to the power of humans as the future drivers of economic growth as access to talent replaces access to capital as the key economic differentiator. Various forces are converging: Aging workforces, the collaborative power of rapidly evolving technologies, the need for companies to do more with less, and the problem of the skills young people are being equipped with not matching the skills businesses need. All this makes talent attraction and retention critical in order for organizations to gain a competitive edge.
“As the economy begins to click into second gear, employers are hiring but they are doing so with extreme caution. They will only hire individuals who have the exact specificity of skills they are looking for,” said Jeffrey A. Joerres, Manpower Inc. chairman and CEO. “The economy will gather strength as 2011 progresses and businesses will need to work with their people to unleash their full spectrum of skills and engage them on a human level to retain their best employees in an era when competition for talents becomes ever greater.”
Temporary employment was little changed in January, with a fall of 11,000 in the number of people taken on for temporary assignments. This suggests employers still have a degree of uncertainty about the sustainability of the recovery and are opting to grow their flexible workforce rather than risk full-time hires at this stage. Manpower’s quarterly Employment Outlook Survey for the first three months of 2011 shows that American employers report the most optimistic hiring intentions in more than two years.