The labor market: jobs that are hard to fill

Construction workers

The job market is a difficult place to navigate right now. In the shadow of record-breaking levels of unemployment, competition for openings has never been so fierce. And with companies doing all they can to ensure the decision they make on a hire is the right one first time, new patterns in the labor market are being to show.

According to an annual survey commissioned by staffing firm Manpower, current trends in the labor market are leaving more and more openings that are becoming harder and harder to fill.

As such comes Manpower's 10 Hardest Jobs to Fill list. On it are mix of white- and blue-collar jobs, all relatively specialised. On the blue-collared side, the list features machinists and machine operators, skilled tradespeople, mechanics, laborers and production operators; while on the white-collar side includes engineers, technicians, sales reps, accountants and IT staff.

Shortage

However, despite the findings of this year's Manpower study, there is hope that labor-market power is shifting back toward employers as the economic situation recovers. In 2007, for instance, Manpower's same survey of 2000 US firms found that 41 percent of employers had reported difficulties in filling positions; by 2008, that figure had about halved to 22 percent of respondents.

For labor advocates this comes as no surprise, who argue that as American employers cut roughly 250,000 jobs in the first four months of last year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there is no reason for a shortage.

In fact, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has taken particulat umbrage with the reports findings, with Ross Eisenbrey - the organization's vice president - commenting that, "our starting point at EPI is where most economists would start: If you don’t have low unemployment and rising wages, you don’t have a shortage."

As a result, the issue seems a little confusing.

The real story

There are real issues here. Firstly, as cited in the Manpower survey, is the shortage of engineers - there has already been reports that there is a decline in student interest in the sciences - and experts argue engineering recruitment is going to be around for some time to come, especially as oil companies, for instance, have employees averaging in their late 40s.

Eisenbrey, meanwhile, argues the case for EPI data, which shows labor shortages in a number of white-collar niches, from heatlhcare workers to librarians, farm managers and environmental scientists. 

If the recession has demonstrated anything, it is that the nature of getting a job, the significance of retaining talent and the development of an employee has changed.

But, regardless of the digital age that we have now reached, we still need things to get from A to B - whether the trip is across the warehouse floor or around the world. And because of that, jobs for laborers are never going to go out of fashion. In fact, according to predictions by the BLS, laborer roles are set to increase by almost a quarter of a million between 2004 and 2014, suggesting that, if we are to manage to growing labor gap, we need to act fast.

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