Jobseekers to jobs, by industry
Government 2.3
Health care and social assistance 1.5
Retail Trade 3.5
Finance and insurance 1.5
Durable Goods Manufacturing 3.8
Information 2.1
Construction 11.7
Health care and social assistance 1.51
Accommodation and food services 2.90
Durable Goods Manufacturing 3.8
Transportation, warehousing, and utilities 3.5
Educational services 4.8
Real estate and rental and leasing 2.6
Arts, entertainment, and recreation 4.7
Overall: 3.1
Sources: Economic Policy Institute, Bureau of Labor Statistics
In some ways, the job market is a game of chance.
Do skills and determination count? You bet.
But so do the odds – especially if you’re playing against a lot of people with similar skills, drive and connections. And you are, if you are looking for work.
“They are getting hundreds of applications,” said Bret Thompson, 47, of Dunwoody, who has been looking since losing his nine months ago.
The odds are slowly improving, with 3.1 jobseekers for every position today versus a peak of 6.7 per opening in 2009. But that’s still well above the ratio of 1.1 jobseeker per job of the late 1990s.
Last month, the employment picture suffered a slight setback, as the number of jobseekers in Georgia rose faster than the creation of jobs. As a result, the state’s unemployment rate ticked up in May from 8.2 percent to 8.3 percent, the Department of Labor announced Thursday.
It was the first rise in two years, but the message is mixed: some discouraged workers return to the job search when they sense that things are improving — and their return at least temporarily raises the rate. But last month also saw an increase in layoffs.
Nationally, the most recent data show 3.8 million job openings in the United States. That is 16 percent below late 2007, when the economy tipped into recession.
While the seekers-to-jobs ratio is falling, jobhunters outnumber openings in every sector, said economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. “There just aren’t enough jobs out there.”
The odds vary by sector.
The recession was centered on real estate, so the odds have been longest for landing work in anything linked to construction: nearly 12 to one, she said.
In retail, there are about 3.5 jobseekers for each opening. In manufacturing, it’s 3.8 to 1.
And those odds do not include the many people who have dropped out of the job search in discouragement, gone back to school or retired prematurely.
Among sectors with better odds for jobhunters: accounting and finance, technology jobs like “dot net developers,” and some business analyst positions, said Andy Decker, regional vice president for staffing firm Robert Half International.
“There is demand for specific roles, where there is short supply,” Decker said. “We’ve been talking a lot about what we call the ‘specialist economy.’ It is almost a tale of two job markets.”
Metro Atlanta has an estimated 200,000 unemployed. Available data and anecdotal evidence from jobseekers suggest the seekers-for-openings ratios here parallel national numbers.
Cookie Langster, 58, of Canton lost her job in human resources in late 2011 when the company where she’d spent seven years was acquired. She’s had contract work since then, but when she applies for jobs she finds herself in a crowd
“I’m a baby boomer, so when I look for work, you have a lot of people in senior level taking positions that I am qualified for and at the lower level you have an influx of younger people.”
Eric Cooney, 29, of Marietta had a career as emergency medical technician. He quit his job a year and a half ago to attend Southern Polytechnic State and study communications, hoping to combine his experience with a degree. Now, he needs a paycheck as he approaches the end of school.
He couldn’t find anything close to his previous pay and finally took a job at a call center for little better than half the pay he’d had before.
“I’ve sent out 400 to 500 resumes across metro Atlanta and northern Georgia and I’ve had four or five interviews,” he said.
The region has added 122,662 jobs in the past three years – modest by standards of the 1990s, yet a welcome change after losing nearly twice as many in the three years before.
CareerBuilder last month posted 21,000 jobs for metro Atlanta – up 23 percent from the year before, said Jennifer Grasz, company vice president. The biggest growth area was customer service, where openings were up 32 percent, she said.
But nursing was the job with the most openings in the region, according to Wanted Analytics, a New York-based subsidiary of a Canadian research company: 6,229 positions posted last month. Other jobs with more than 3,000 posted openings include web developer, software developer, retail sales and truck driver.
A stronger market improves the odds even those who have weaker work histories.
Pamela Winn, 44, of Atlanta started looking for a job last summer. She hadn’t worked for several years. She expected to have difficulty finding work – and she did. But she has finally landed a $10.25-an-hour position at a hardware chain.
“I am just excited to be there,” she said.
Economists say they expect the odds to keep improving as the economy grows modestly.
Eric Rader, 39, Atlanta was laid off in January from his job with a marketing agency. Since then, he’s had a series of interviews without quite finding a good fit for his sales skills. Last week, he got a three-month contract at a technology company.
“I see a bright, shining light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.
