148,000 jobs added in December. Here’s how the job scene looks for 2018…
The December Jobs Report is out. December 2017 showed a gain of 148,000 jobs, bringing the average over three months to 204,000 jobs. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1 percent, the lowest level since 2000. This gain in job numbers marks the 87th consecutive month of job growth, which is an unprecedented stretch in recent US history. An important thing to note apart from rising job numbers in the job report is the rise in wages. For much of the year, the wages have increased by around 2.4 percent. According to many economists, this is a rate lower than what was expected. With earnings raise in December of 9 cents, equivalent to a year-on-year increase of 2.5 percent, economists will continue to dig deeper as to how the companies seeming to have an ever-increasing demand for American workers, dole out on paltry raises.
2017 has been one of the strongest years for the US economy after the 2008 housing crisis, and it continues to grow further at an ideal pace. In terms of numbers, the growth rate for 2018 is forecasted to be around 2.5%, falling into the ideal range of 2–3%, as per the Federal Open Market Committee meeting in December. There isn’t much inflation or deflation, and the Unemployment rate is currently on the decline — leading to an ideal state of the economy, also known as the “Goldilocks” economy.
The Unemployment rate forecast for 2018 is 3.9 percent, taking into account all of Trump’s policies announced or in effect. An important thing to note here, which many of the articles and news reports fail to do is that these Unemployment numbers take into account all kinds of jobs — full-time, part-time and temp jobs. Looking through the magnifying glass, we can see that the rise in part-time and temp jobs in the low paying food services and retail industries have offset the unemployment numbers resulting in a false image of job security in the country. While it is a comfort to know that 96 percent of the workforce is able to get some sort of job, we are far from an ideal job scene. The real unemployment rate including the underemployed, the marginally attached and discouraged workers comes up to double the advertised value — nearly 8 percent.
In the occupational outlook published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total employment is expected to increase by 20.5 million jobs by 2020 as compared to 2010. Noting the growth made thus far, the economy is closer than ever to fully recover from the 2008 recession. It is expected that in the next five years, the economy should be able to keep the unemployment rate in the 4–5 percent range.
In 2018, the fastest growth in jobs, as evident from the last five years, is expected to be in health care, personal care and social assistance, construction, and tech. With jobs requiring master’s degree growing the fastest, while those requiring high school diploma occupying the slow end of the spectrum.
The most significant growth is expected to be in healthcare and social assistance as the American population ages. Professional and tech jobs are bound to closely follow the growing numbers of jobs in the healthcare sector, with a huge amount of jobs opening in big data, data research, data science and AI, technical consulting and mobile technologies. With such a rapid growth in transitioning the conventional computer infrastructure to the cloud, the cloud and big data consulting businesses are the most lucrative to be in at the moment to stay relevant.
Following the healthcare and tech sector, there is an expected substantial increase in job openings in the education sector, human resources, seasonal and temporary workers, waste collection and construction. Looking on the other side of the coin, there are forecasts of heavy job losses in areas of manufacturing, low-level technology jobs like data entry, mining and metallurgy, Cargo and Freight Agents, and Telemarketing. This comes as a result of shifting trend in the industries towards outsourcing and automation.
There is much uncertainty in the job market, which leads us to a very important question — What Should You Do??
Judging from the shifting trends in the industry, your best bet is to align yourself with the coming changes in automation and technological advancements. Doing absolutely nothing is a very grave mistake you might not want to make. The industries are changing rapidly and picking up skills to match up with the changes will help you survive in the increasingly cutthroat corporate landscape. So, look around at the new types of jobs rolling out in your industry, see if any of them interests you, take note of the skills required for that job, start learning by enrolling in online courses and buying books, get certified, keep up with recent job trends by reading magazines and blogs, and most of all work hard.
We understand that these are times that require constant vigilance on the changing job market, and so with the start of 2018, we are launching the “The Job blog” to help you along the way. Take part on the Discussions Forum on the site, and subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter for staying on top of things.
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Originally published at www.jobmemos.com.
