Jobs with Benefits

Companies have been adding jobs during the economic recovery, but unfortunately for those in the job market, most jobs have been temporary positions. As businesses tested the economic waters, the temporary services industry added nearly half a million workers between June of 2009 and June of 2011 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the American Staffing Association. Now companies are diving into the deep end of the employment pool and hiring--albeit slowly--permanent workers.

Executives at three NH staffing firms say jobs are increasingly transitioning from temporary to temp-to-permanent and permanent. So what are the hot employment sectors? Staffing insiders concur demand is increasing for administrative, financial and IT jobs.

Barry Roy, branch manager of Robert Half International in Manchester, expects specialized accounting, finance and IT salaries to increase about 3.5 percent this year. Paul Wilson, president of Wilson Employment Networks in Concord and Manchester, says during the recession it would take months to place candidates in office administration jobs, if at all, but now those placements take a week if the candidate has a solid skill set. We're calling the candidates regarding the opportunity and often they've already gotten a job. That's a significant measuring tool for us, Wilson says.

It's continuing good news for job seekers in NH which consistently falls below the national unemployment rate. New Hampshire's unemployment rate was 5.1 percent in December, compared to 8.5 percent nationally, and the state added 9,200 jobs between November 2010 and 2011.

One of the consistent trends we saw last year was employers were just getting to the point of feeling comfortable, but they were afraid to pull a trigger to add permanent jobs, Steven Davis, director of operations for Staffing Sense in Stratham says. They didn't have the confidence. That is now changing, says Roy, explaining last year it took a company an average of four weeks to find permanent employees, where it now takes five due in part to a shrinking talent pool as more people land jobs. He also notes, medium to large companies with $40 million in revenue and more are increasingly hiring permanent staff.

Still, staffing executives say the recession's effects linger. For instance, says Wilson, middle management positions are hard to come by and they are certainly not paying what people were making. Projections from NH Employment Security suggest jobs in production occupations will fall between 2008 and 2018, the only occupation sector projected to do so. Roy says that is probably because of increased automation. And while health care jobs in general are still in demand, NH hospitals were hit hard by state Medicaid reimbursement cuts. As a result, Davis says, hospitals went from having 70 to 100 open positions at the end of 2010 to 20 to 40 at the end of 2011. Overall, though, staffing executives say fewer available workers combined with increasing confidence will result in more permanent hires.