Executive Job Market Shows Strength in Major Metro Areas

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

Employers in major metro areas are adding to their executive ranks despite the economic crisis that is gripping the financial and consumer discretionary sectors. According to TheLadders.comís Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report for Q308, which tracks hiring patterns in 20 major cities and surveys in-the-trenches job seekers nationwide, the executive job markets in San Francisco, San Diego, Washington D.C., Boston, Seattle, Houston and New York are growing.

Tracking the growth rates of executive level job posts throughout the 3rd quarter of 2008, TheLadders.com Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report found year-over-year increases in:

Technology
Healthcare
Industrial

There are segments of the job market that are clearly strained right now, but itís critical for job seekers out there to realize that even in this market – with headlines about the government bailout and corporate layoffs – people are being hired for their dream jobs every day,î said Marc Cenedella, president and CEO of TheLadders.com.

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 (ratio of job seekers to job postings) were:

2:1 – San Francisco
3.1 – San Diego, Washington, DC
4:1 – Boston, Houston, New York, Seattle

Job markets attracting the highest number of job seekers from other parts of the country are New York, San Francisco and Boston.

Across the nation, some of the top companies currently posting the most open positions are BAE Systems, Cisco Systems, Google, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Philips, Sepracor and Sony.

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: How do you feel about the job market in your city? Are you open to relocation? How long do you think it will take to land your next job?

When describing the high-end job markets in their cities:

58 percent said they expect to land a new job within six months or less

55 percent cited a general lack of stability

63 percent said they were willing to move from their current cities for a new job opportunity

46 percent said they are actively looking for new job opportunities in cities outside of their own

Complete city-by-city data and survey results are available at: