Recession Perception Invades Executive Job Market, Growth Emerges in Tech and Pharmaceutical Sectors

Senior-level job seekers are feeling the impact of the recession. According to TheLadders.comís Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report for Q108, which tracks hiring patterns in 20 major cities and surveys in-the-trenches job seekers nationwide, 74 percent of $100,000 job seekers said they have noticed a slow-down in interview opportunities. Undeterred by the perceived slow-down, 65 percent of those surveyed said they still expected to land a new job in six months or less.

This unflagging optimism despite the looming recession is consistent with hiring trends among 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 pharmaceutical and technology industries have seen sharp increases in executive-level hiring nationwide.

One person's recession is another person's opportunity, said Marc Cenedella, president and CEO of TheLadders.com. Some of the very best business innovations and companies have been conceived during periods of fiscal unrest. While we're clearly in the midst of a slowdown, job seekers in the current market must capitalize on the downturn as prime time to innovate and grow.

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, D.C., Boston and New York. The ratio of job seekers to job postings sits at a favorable 3:1 in both San Francisco and San Diego, and 4:1 in Washington, D.C., Boston and New York.

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

Across the nation, the firms doing the most high end hiring are concentrated predominantly in the technology and pharmaceutical sectors. Some of the top companies currently posting the most open positions are Abbott Laboratories, Cisco Systems, Expedia, Genzyme, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems.

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?

When asked directly about the impact of the recession, 74 percent of active job seekers said they have noticed a slow-down in interview opportunities. Despite that negative signal, a 53 percent majority described the high-end job markets in their cities as either ìstableî or ìsomewhat stableî and 65 percent said it will take less than 6 months to find a new job, an improvement over the results seen in TheLadders.com Q407 Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report.

Complete city-by-city data and survey results are available at the following link: http://www.theladders.com/static/boom/. Please contact Bonnie Schmidt at 631-656-9736, or bonnie@jroderick.com to receive more information.