Executive Job Market Shows Signs of Resilience

Executive Job Market Shows Signs of Resilience: Tech, Healthcare and Defense Sectors Grow Despite Macro Slowdown

TheLadders.com Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report Analyzes Hiring Activity and Surveys Job Seeker Sentiment in Nationwide $100,000 Job Market

Despite a macroeconomic slowdown that has kept the threat of recession looming for the past eight months, pockets of job market growth continue to emerge in the technology, healthcare and defense sectors. According to TheLadders.comís Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report for Q208, which tracks hiring patterns in 20 major cities and surveys in-the-trenches job seekers nationwide, 71 percent of $100,000 job seekers said they have noticed a slow-down in interview opportunities this quarter. However, undeterred by the economic slow-down, 58 percent of those surveyed described the high-end job markets in their cities as stable and 59 percent said they expect to land a new job in six months or less.

This optimism is echoed in the hiring patterns among the large American corporations according to TheLadders.com Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report. While hiring in the financial and consumer discretionary sectors has clearly been impacted by the continued fall-out from the mortgage market collapse, the technology, healthcare and defense sectors are all adding to their executive-level ranks nationwide.

There were 12,000 more $100,000 jobs posted on TheLadders.com in the first quarter of 2008 than there were in the first quarter of 2007, said Marc Cenedella, president and CEO of TheLadders.com. The recession is grabbing the headlines, but there are always countercyclical segments of the market that thrive in a down economy; weíre seeing a lot of reliance in this marketplace.

Regional Job Market Analysis
To get at the heart of hiring patterns in the $100,000 job market, TheLadders.comís Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report measured hiring activity across a variety of metrics and found the regional markets with the most favorable $100,000 climates were San Francisco, San Diego, Washington DC, Seattle and Boston. The ratio of job seekers to job postings sits at a favorable 2:1 in San Francisco, 3.1 in San Diego and 4:1 in Washington DC, Seattle and Boston.

Job markets attracting the highest number of job seekers from other parts of the country are New York, San Francisco and Boston. Tampa and Detroit continue to be among the tightest markets in the 20 DMAs.

Across the nation, some of the top companies currently posting the most open positions are BAE Systems, Cisco Systems, Deloitte, General Dynamics, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, PayPal, and Sepracor.

Job Seeker Survey
As part of TheLadders.com Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report, active job seekers throughout the country were asked to weigh in with their own first-hand accounts on the status of the current job market in their cities. Job seekers were asked questions such as: Have you directly felt the impact of the recession on your job hunt? How long do you think it will take you to land a new job?

As noted above, when asked directly about the impact of the recession, 71 percent of job seekers said they have noticed a slow-down in interview opportunities. In describing the high-end job markets in their cities, a 58 percent majority cited overall stability and 59 percent said they expect to land a new job in six months or less. An upwardly mobile group, 64 percent of the job seekers surveyed said they were willing to move from their current cities for a new job opportunity. Another 42 percent said they are actively looking for new job opportunities in cities outside of their own.