Tag Archives: Bureau of Labor Statistics

January 28, 2014 · 4:30 am

Job Seekers: Look to Best Companies!

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I discussed a few posts ago how companies on the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For list are experiencing huge amounts of growth in headcount. That post focused on how these outstanding workplaces are combating growing pains and dealing with rapid expansion. Being ranked one of the best workplace cultures in the US certainly helps feed the cycle of growth, as job seekers apply in droves.

The good news for job seekers? The Best companies are hiring and they are hiring a lot! FORTUNE reports that at least 24 companies on this year’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list are planning to fill at least 1,000 (and for some, even more!) jobs in the coming year. From big tech companies like Google (ranked #1), Intel, and Cisco, to medical organizations like Houston Methodist, retail stores like Nordstrom, and markets like Whole Foods and Wegmans, the “we’re hiring” sign is posted out front.

What are these companies looking for in a new hire, and who is getting hired? At Great Place to Work, the research and analysis firm that produces the lists, we’ve pulled together some hiring statistics from this year’s Best Companies to provide a little perspective.  The 100 Best Companies last year filled 6,297 positions, on average, for both new and already existing positions. The average number of these positions filled internally was nearly 30%. The average number of new hires referred by current employees was 28%. This corroborates what we already assume, that internal referrals add significant weight to applications, so before all else, reach out to potential contacts! There can be big benefits for the person referring you as well, so don’t automatically assume people might view it as a hassle. The average maximum bonus paid for a single referral at best companies in the last 12 months was $3,595!

How to impress in an interview? According to recruiters from best companies that are hiring (via FORTUNE), top ways to impress include: being able to articulate your alignment with the company’s mission and values (and explain why they resonate with you), doing exceptional “homework” and truly understanding the business and key competitors going into an interview, being able to discuss how you plan to impact the company, and demonstrating passion, curiosity, and (a big one!) innovation.

For new college grads the numbers may seem a bit less optimistic, out of the average new hires in the last year (6,297) the average number of new graduates hired was 496, and the average percent of positions filled by college students at this year’s best companies is 9.9%. However, this shouldn’t discourage new graduates from applying, as they are automatically equipped with several highly valued skills beyond a basic degree. Examples I’ve touched on in previous blogs include that college students and Millennials are more likely to be passionate about social responsibility and attuned with an organization’s mission and values, be highly aware of technology and social media and able to quickly assimilate with a company’s use of such tools. No matter who you are, however, if you are looking to find a new job consider these stats, and check out this year’s FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For list– you may be very glad you did.

Best Companies Hiring

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Filed under 100 Best Companies to Work For, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, FORTUNE Magazine, Great Place to Work, Great Place to Work Institute, Hiring, Millennials

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January 14, 2014 · 4:30 am

Rapid Growth and Great Workplaces

Data Point Tuesday
The 2014 FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For list announcement is just days away and here at Great Place to Work we just can’t wait to share some of the awesome 100 Best Companies Trends from this year’s list! In true Data Point Tuesday fashion, I’ve compiled some noteworthy stats from our 2014 100 Best Companies Trends whitepaper to share with you, (the full trends report as well the Fortune 100 Best Companies list will be available here on Thursday) enjoy the sneak peek!

One of the most prominent trends we’ve seen with Best Companies this year is growth. For 2014 100 Best Companies with available revenue data, revenues in the last 24 months have risen an average of 22.2% and headcount is increasing to match that. The number of employees at the 2014 100 Best Companies increased by an average of 6.1% since 2012 and 15.4% since 2011 which, according to Current Employment Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is nearly five times the growth rate of U.S. companies overall in the same two-year period. This significant increase in headcount, while positive for companies, undoubtedly also raises concerns. During times of rapid growth organizations can experience a number of challenges including: inadequate skills and pipeline of leaders, loss of top talent and leaders, scaling and developing new systems, assimilating new employees both socially and process-wise, bringing new and longer tenure employees together, balancing cultural norms of past with the need to grow quickly and be a company of the future, and burn out and disaffection of existing employees. With such challenges in mind, how are these Best Companies managing such rapid growth, and, what exactly are they doing to avoid growing pains?

In 2013 Great Place to Work compiled a benchmark group of great workplaces experiencing high growth (+20% employee population) while appearing on the Best Companies list between 2011-2013. The group was used to study the relationship between rapid growth and the employee experience at the 100 Best and included several Best Companies, such as Chesapeake Energy, Hilcorp Energy Company, NetApp, Quicken Loans, Rackspace Hosting, salesforce.com, and World Wide Technology, Inc. Results of the study indicated an exceptionally high level of trust at Best Companies experiencing rapid growth, with 94% of employees at such companies stating that “taking everything into account, I would say this is a great place to work” vs. 91% of employees at Best Companies not experiencing such rapid growth. Additionally, employees at high growth Best Companies displayed a 4% higher average score on all trust index statements compared with employees at Best Companies not experiencing rapid growth. Trust index scores correspond to statements such as: “management is approachable, easy to talk with”, “this is a fun place to work”, “I feel I receive a fair share of the profits made at this organization”, and “people look forward to coming to work here”. It’s noteworthy too that these high trust index scores at Best Companies experiencing rapid growth come from both new hires as well as tenured employees (2+ years tenure).

Great Place to Work Chart
We can take away from this data a better understanding of how Best Companies are handling the growth trend. Marcus Erb, Associate Vice President of Research, and the leader of the 2013 study on the relationship between high growth and the employee experience at the 100 Best sums it up well: “Our research shows that as far as the employee experience is concerned, companies with a strong foundation of trust, a robust leadership pipeline, and a firm commitment to the company’s culture are far better at navigating the challenges that come along with growth and change.”

Make sure to check out the 2014 FORTUNE 100 Best Companies list on January 16th

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Filed under 100 Best Companies to Work For, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, FORTUNE Magazine, Great Place to Work, Great Place to Work Institute

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October 1, 2013 · 4:30 am

From the Archives: We can’t succeed without Millennials

This was a very popular post from April, 2012. The data is pretty much the same. And it bears repeating.

Managers and supervisors (especially in the Baby Boomer cohort) in almost every type and size of business have been known to lament the lack of loyalty and so-called business savvy in the Millennial generation.

  • “They want to be promoted too fast!”
  • “They don’t want to pay their dues!”
  • “They don’t understand how things work!”
  • “They want too much flexibility!”
  • “When things don’t go their way they quit!”
  • “Why won’t they stay?”

The bottom line is that organizations are finding it challenging to keep Millennials engaged and on the payroll.  In fact, with the average employment tenure of workers in the 20-24 year -old age group at 1.5 years (per the BLS), it’s challenging to keep all our employees engaged and the on the payroll.  (See my previous post on the Quits vs. Layoffs gap.  It might not be what you think!)

Achievers and Experience Inc. fielded their annual survey of graduating college students in January.  The data are eye opening.

Despite what we think we know about them, the vast majority of these about-to-enter-the-workforce Milllennials would really like to stay with their next (in most cases, first) employer for 5 years or longer!  Wait.  What?  Look at the chart below:

47% of the 8,000 college graduating respondents in the Achievers/Experience Inc. survey indicated that they expected to stay with their next employer five years or longer.  Note the language:  expect to stay not would like to stay!  That means when they join our organizations they have every expectation of making a career with us.  They’re not just accepting a job.  They’ve evaluated our EVP (Employer Value Proposition) as a match for the meaning they want to create in their lives through their work.  (Interesting to note that the biggest percentage of respondents expect to stay with their employer for 10+ years!)

So, OK.  This has got to be their youthful exuberance and relative inexperience speaking, right?  Well, I wonder if that really matters.

Employers need these Millennials.  Employers need these Millennials now.  Employers will need these Millennials more every day.  (See my recent post here.)

And employers need them to stay a whole lot longer than 1.5 years!

So what happens between “I expect to stay with my employer for 10 or more years…” and “…after one year with the organization I’m leaving for a better opportunity”?  I think we all know that answer to that question.

We don’t live up to the EVP we sold them.  We don’t engage Millennials the way they tell us they want to be engaged.  Instead, we…

  • make sure they fit into our existing career paths and job descriptions
  • focus on making sure they “pay their dues” – the way we did
  • keep our processes and rules rigid and unbending – and only pretend to listen when they offer up “different” ways of working
  • resist the notion that work can be done with excellence anywhere but in a cubicle
  • make it difficult for Millennials to interact with senior leaders
  • make it difficult for Millennials to collaborate with colleagues
  • designate social responsibility activities a perk instead of a foundational value
  • try to “lure” them to stay with tenure-based plaques and timepieces

These data are a wake-up call for employers.  It’s a message from our talent pipeline that they really do want to engage with us; they believe our employer brand marketing messages; they want to learn and grow with us.

It’s time to listen harder and make sure our employer brand messages aren’t experienced as bait and switch tactics.

I don’t know about you, but I’d hate for the Millennials to have such negative employment experiences at the beginning of their careers that they opt out of organizational life altogether before they’re 30.  We’d really be in a pickle then!

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Filed under Achievers, Baby Boomers, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Success, China Gorman, Demographics, Employment Data, Engagement, Millennials, Rewards & Recognition, Student Job Search, Talent pipeline, U.S. Department of Labor

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July 9, 2013 · 4:30 am

Jobs recovery? Not so much…

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I’ve referenced several times the good work that Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce is doing in predicting the educational Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce logopreparedness (or lack thereof) of the workforce in relation to the anticipated jobs growth in the United States. Anthony P. Carnevale and his colleagues have just published Recovery:  Job Growth and Education Requirements Through 2020. This is a follow up to their 2010 publication, Help Wanted:  Projection of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018.

The bad news is that the educational preparedness of the U.S. workforce is getting worse as we look to the future. Without systemic changes to the U.S. post-secondary education system, the economy will now fall 5 million workers short with post-secondary degrees by 2020 – an increase of 2 million from their projection of a 3 million shortfall in 2018.

While many sources are predicting that the U.S. economy will create 55 million new job openings over the next decade, these new job openings are a combination of an anticipated 24 million newly created jobs and 31 million openings created by Baby Boomer retirements. Foundational to the calculations are that jobs are returning much more slowly that we thought they would following the recession.

Recovery Figure 1

Still, an increase of 24 million new jobs between now and 2020 seems hugely optimistic. That’s an average of 307,000 new jobs per month between now and 2020. When has the U.S. sustained that kind of consistent job growth? Well, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the last 30 years, only 1994 averaged new jobs creation at a rate of over 300,000 per month. 1994. A long time ago.

So there’s that.

But there’s more from this report that’s worth noting for those concerned about the future of the talent pipeline:

  • By 2020, 65% of all jobs in the economy will require post-secondary education and training beyond high school

    • 35% of the job openings will require at least a bachelor’s degree

    • 30% of the job openings will require some college or an associate’s degree

    • 36% of the job openings will not require education beyond high school

Reccovery Figure 4

The implications here are clear regardless of the numbers of new jobs created: employers and others predict that soon nearly two-thirds of all jobs will require some kind of post-secondary education or training. In 1973 – just 40 years ago – less than one-third of all jobs required the same. Forty years isn’t a very long time – just one generation. Lots of change in the nature of jobs, work, education, skills and employability in 40 years.

The report also defines the skills that will be most valued and in demand for the new jobs landscape. These are not as revolutionary as one might think. Cognitive skills of leadership, communication, analytics and administration will be most valued and in demand. Take a look and see what you think.

The Center on Education and the Workforce generates useful information for those involved with education and/or workforce planning – functions that should joined at the hip today and in the future.

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Filed under Baby Boomers, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Center on Education and the Workforce, China Gorman, College Graduation Rates, Education Deficit, Job Creation, Post-secondary education

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June 25, 2013 · 4:30 am

The Hidden Job Market is Alive and Well — and That’s Not Good News!

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Last week I wrote about matching the number of job openings to the number of unemployed people by industry. The numbers were arresting. I used data from the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz.

In that post, Unemployed Workers Still Far Outnumber Job Openings in Every Major Sector, Shierholz provided this graph showing the Job-Seekers ratio from December 2000 through April 2013 based on data from the BLS JOLTS Survey and Current Population Survey:

Not enough jobs to go around June 2013

This is an incredible view of the last 13 years. The Jobs-to-Seekers ratio in December 2000 was 1 to 1.1:  pretty much full employment. The unemployment rate that month was 3.9%, which means that even people who didn’t want to work were working.

As I read the data, though, it looks a little odd:  the CPS (Current Population Survey) and the JOLTS Survey together show that in April while there were 3,737,000 reported job openings, 4,425,000 workers were hired and 4,279,000 workers were separated for a net employment increase of 146,000. Which means that  688,000 more workers were hired than there were job openings. Even if these April hires were from the March job openings (3,875,000), there were still 550,000 more hires than openings.

So the hidden job market must be alive and well if we’re hiring more than half-a-million more workers than there are reported openings. Think about that. And think about the reported skills shortages. And think about the difference between structural and cyclical unemployment (which I wrote about here).

The reason our unemployment rate continues to stay at an unacceptable and economy-stopping 7%+ may not be so related to the lack of new job creation – we appear to be filling more than the reported number of job openings every month! – but to the scarcity of specific skills and talent. So maybe the skills gap is real and the 9,000,000+ workers who are unemployed will stay that way until they acquire new skills or further lower their job targets.

Either way, that’s not good news for employers with openings they can’t fill, workers who can’t find jobs for the skills they have, or our economy which can’t get out of 2nd gear.

The hidden job market is very much alive. Too bad that’s not good news.

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Filed under Bureau of Labor Statistics, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Hidden Job Market, HR Data, Job Creation, Structural Unemployment, Unemployment Rate

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June 18, 2013 · 4:30 am

Forget the Skills Deficit: How About Filling Open Jobs?

data point tuesday_500

So the unemployment rate went up a little in May, from 7.5% to 7.6%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics deems this increase as “essentially unchanged.” Despite 175,000 more people working. How does this math work?

I’ve written about the how the unemployment rate in the U.S. is determined here and here. But here’s another slice of data to consider. It’s the number of job openings. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) published each month alongside the unemployment numbers, shares really interesting data each month. Along with the data about quits and hires, are data about job openings. Fascinating. Really.

JOLTS June 2013

So, although there were 3,757,000 job openings in April (down 118,000 from March, or “little changed” as the BLS describes it) the difference between hires and total separations was just 146,000 month over month. So on the surface, a net of 175,000 new jobs is curious.

More curious is matching the number of job openings to the number of unemployed people by industry. Economist Heidi Shierholz published a piece for the Economic Policy Institute last week that shows in stark relief that unemployed workers still significantly outnumber job openings in every major sector.  Based on analysis of the JOLTS and other data, the following chart is a snapshot of current job openings numbers by industry and the numbers of unemployed workers in those industries. It’s rather eye popping and raises lots of questions.

Unemployed far outstrips available jobs June 2013

Ouch! So think about this data when you read about employers not being able to find the right skills for their openings. Is it really skills they can’t find? Or something else? How hard are they looking? What BFOQs are they using that overlook millions of job seekers?

Curious, yes?

There are so many data points around employment, job openings, quits, hires, workers, unemployed workers, discouraged job seekers, skills, education levels, education spending… The data points come from bonafide sources (like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and  the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce), quasi bonafide sources with bias (like the Economic Policy Institute, SHRM, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AARP), vendor sponsored research and white papers, and millions of blogs and other media sources.

Lots of sources. Lots of data points. Lots of analysis. Lots of conflicting findings and conclusions.

The best we can do is be pro-active in finding sources that are transparent about their data and analysts who seem unbiased. And then be persistent in looking at all sides of an issue and smart in believing what you read.

On the issues of skills, jobs and unemployment, though, it seems that we don’t know what we’re doing. We may not even really know what the truth is. Except this:  we’ve got to do better at matching job openings with available talent. It’s clear that we haven’t figured this out. Not government, not business/employers, not education providers, not workers, not vendors, not recruiters.

Forget the skills deficit. What about filling the open the jobs?

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Filed under Bureau of Labor Statistics, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Economic Policy Institute, Employment Data, HR Data, Job Creation, SHRM, Skills Shortage, Structural Unemployment, U.S. Department of Labor, Unemployment

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October 9, 2012 · 4:30 am

7.8% Huh?

Most people saw the U.S. jobs report numbers on Friday and thought, “this doesn’t make sense.”   All the data we’ve been seeing shows that employment continues to be weak and job seekers continue to drop out of the job market.

Monster’s Employment Index for September showed a 2 point decline month-over-month:

That’s a decline in U.S. online job posting activity.  This would indicate a slowdown in hiring not a hiring urge of massive proportions.

The Glassdoor Q3 Employment Confidence Survey shows a pretty strong worsening of confidence on the part of job seekers that they’ll find a job in the next six months:

This wouldn’t indicate that job seekers see people around them getting jobs.  And 59% of employed people don’t think they could replace their job in six months.  Six months!

So what’s the deal with the massive reduction in the unemployment rate from 8.1% to 7.8%?  Well, as I wrote here, the official BLS unemployment rate combines data from two surveys conducted by the U.S. government:  The Establishment Survey which surveys employers and the Household Survey which surveys thousands of households on a range of topics including employment.  The two surveys tell two very different stories in September.

Here’s the Establishment Survey portion of the jobs report from the BLS (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics):

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 114,000 in September. In 2012, employment growth has averaged 146,000 per month, compared with an average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011.

So we’re down from the monthly average in both 2011 and 2012.  And the monthly average in 2011 was higher than this year’s monthly average.  Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 114,000 in September.  That isn’t enough to cover the new entrants into the labor force – much less hundreds of thousands of unemployed job seekers.

The Household Survey tells a different story:

Total employment rose by 873,000 in September, following 3 months of little change. The employment-population ratio increased by 0.4 percentage point to 58.7 percent, after edging down in the prior 2 months. The overall trend in the employment-population ratio for this year has been flat. The civilian labor force rose by 418,000 to 155.1 million in September, while the labor force participation rate was little changed at 63.6 percent.

So.  Total employment – as reported by individuals not employers – rose by 873,000 in September following “three months of little change.”  Despite declining confidence in almost every other survey we see, 873,000 people reported working in September who weren’t working in August.  It boggles the mind.

Here’s where those jobs came from:

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) rose from 8.0 million in August to 8.6 million in September. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

Part-timers.  600,000 new part-timers.  Part-timers who could be working as little as a couple of hours a week from home. Truly, it boggles the mind.

This is all very confusing.  We’re covered over in statistics, trends and data that tell us that the employment picture is stagnant at best.  Confidence in the job market continues to decline. And the unemployment rate went down .3% in one month.

I’m with Jack Welch:  I can’t connect these dots.

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Filed under Bureau of Labor Statistics, Connecting Dots, Employment Data, Glassdoor, HR Data, Jack Welch, Monster, U.S. Department of Labor, Unemployment, Unemployment Rate

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August 28, 2012 · 4:30 am

Low Employment vs. High Unemployment Around the World

As we prepare to attract, develop and retain skilled workers around the world, who works and who doesn’t work is interesting to me.  So I thought I’d share the following charts that I ran across in a collection of statistics published by the International Labor Comparisons Division of the BLS.  The first shows a comparison of the employment population ratios (proportion of the working-age population that is employed) by sex in 16 countries, adjusted to U.S. concepts.

According to the BLS definitions, employment includes all people who:

  1. worked at least 1 hour as paid employees, working in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked at least 15 hours as unpaid workers in a family-operated enterprise, and
  2. all those who did not work but had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent due to vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management disputes, job training, or other family or personal reasons, regardless of whether they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs.

(Actually, I don’t know which is more interesting, the definition of employment above or the chart that follows…)

It’s interesting to note the differences in employment percentages  between men and women. Turkey (40.7),  Mexico (33.4), the Republic of Korea (22.4) and Japan (22) all have differences of 20 points or more between the sexes’ employment rates, and Italy (19.5) is right there as well.  Those are big gaps.

But add this to the mix:  there doesn’t appear to be a strong correlation between these low employment rates of women and the overall national unemployment rates.  See the chart below:

It intuitively makes sense that South Africa with the lowest percentage of women employed in the workforce would also have the highest overall unemployment rate.  However the relationship between these two data points isn’t as consistent as we might assume across other countries.

Look at the data for Mexico, Japan and Korea.  They all report low employment rates for women and low overall unemployment rates.  Not so intuitive.

That’s what I enjoy about people related statistics.  Just when you think you’ve figured it out, the data throw you curve ball.

What do you think the story is here?  Is it fair to try to find a pattern in data like this?  What conclusions can you draw from this?

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Filed under Bureau of Labor Statistics, China Gorman, Connecting Dots, Demographics, Employment Data, HR Data, U.S. Department of Labor, Unemployment, Unemployment Rate

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August 21, 2012 · 4:30 am

Surprise! Telecommuting Isn’t So Great for Employees…

The June Monthly Labor Review published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor) had an interesting article about the surprising impacts of telecommuting in the U.S. workforce.  Surprising because the data analysis show that telecommuting hasn’t taken hold to any strong degree in the U.S.  And where it has taken hold, the impact isn’t positive:   from an employee perspective, the data suggest that the impact of telecommuting is negative from a work/life integration view!

Wait.  What? Isn’t telecommuting the perk that allows employees more flexibility and balance between work and personal life?  Well, no.  The data suggest not so much.

The Hard Truth About Telecommuting, by Noonan and Glass, says:  “telecommuting appears, instead, to have become instrumental in the general expansion of work hours, facilitating workers’ needs for additional work time beyond the standard workweek and/or the ability of employers to increase or intensify work demands among their salaried employees.”

The average number of hours worked per week from home by telecommuters is small.  And hasn’t been growing to any great degree since the mid-1990’s.  What is interesting is that most of telecommuting hours are overtime hours – they aren’t replacing office hours, they appear to be growing overtime hours.  So while more and more employers tout their “work-flex” telecommuting policies, the percentage of workers who telecommute isn’t growing.

Also surprising, is that younger workers are not telecommuting any more often than more mature workers and parents aren’t telecommuting more than the population as a whole!

The big value of telecommuting, according to this report, appears to accrue to a very few higher level professional employees.  For the rest, it actually appears to encourage longer work weeks.  As the report surmises, being available to telecommute may actually allow employers to increase expectation for work availability during evenings and weekends encouraging longer workdays and workweeks – the exact opposite of the intent.

It might be interesting to take a look at your organization’s use of telecommuting and determine whether this “flexible” approach is creating more or less stress, more or the same hours, more or the same productivity – and if it’s being utilized effectively.  In other words, is it an ineffective perk that feels good to offer and merely looks great on the “best” lists or is it a productivity and engagement tool that is actually producing value for your workforce?

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Filed under Bureau of Labor Statistics, China Gorman, Engagement, HR Data, Monthly Labor Review, Telecommuting, U.S. Department of Labor

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July 17, 2012 · 4:30 am

Paycheck Pessimism

Most people in the HR space know Glassdoor™ as a social media site that gathers anonymous information about employers from current and former employees.  Users can leverage their Facebook network to uncover connections at a company, view current openings, as well as review proprietary information that includes salary reports, company reviews, interview questions, CEO approval ratings and more.  It’s an incredibly useful site for job seekers to get the real skinny on a potential employer from the people who know it best:  its employees.

Of course, for employers and HR professionals, the site offers a full array of branding and recruitment-oriented services including the ability to create enhanced company profiles, Facebook career profiles, targeted job ads and more.

But for our purposes at Data Point Tuesday, we like Glassdoor™ because of its Quarterly Employment Confidence Survey.  Couple this report with monthly BLS reports and you get a robust picture of workforce and employer confidence and other dynamics.

For example, the Glassdoor Employment Confidence Survey surveys employees on their confidence in the areas of pay raises, job market expectations, company outlook and job security.  It’s great data and it’s presented in a highly consumable format.

The most recent survey was conducted by Harris Interactive between June 12 and 14 of 2,208 adults 18 years or older and was published on July 6.  Generally the data show improving or holding steady opinions on workplace confidence dynamics by employees with the exception of optimism in pay raises.  This dropped since last quarter to 40% (from 43%), while 37 % do not expect a pay increase – a low since the survey began in Q4 2008.

At first glance this seems a little off.  Expectations for a raise are at the lowest point since the 4th quarter of 2008 – and lower than the 4th quarter of 2008 when the economy was at its worst? Aren’t we starting to feel better about the economy?  Well, some of us are and some of us clearly are not!  The report says this:

  • Employee optimism in pay raises has dropped slightly since last quarter to 40%, while 37% reported they do not expect a pay increase…
  • The gender gap is closing around expectations for a pay increase over the next 12 months; 41% of women expect an increase compared to 40% of men.  However, men’s optimism around pay has declined five percentage points since last quarter while women’s optimism crept up one percentage point.
  • Younger workers are significantly less optimistic about pay raises than last quarter; 37% of 18-34 years olds expect pay raises in the next 12 months whereas nearly half (49%) expected raises last quarter.  All of the other age ranges have increased 2-4% from last quarter – 48% of 35-55, 42% of 45-54 and 36% of 55+ year olds.

So, if I read this right, men and young people under 35 report strong declines in optimism about pay increases while women report slight increase in optimism.

Men:  down 5%

Young people:  down 12%

Women:  up 1%.

How does this track with your turnover and engagement data?  Tracking turnover data by gender and age demographic is common.  How about engagement data?  Can you make connections between this lack of reported paycheck optimism among males and young people to the engagement data in your organization?  It might be worth a look.

And it might be worth keeping an eye on during the coming quarters – particularly in relation to the election in November.  Young people played a very active and pivotal role in the last presidential election.  Is their level of paycheck pessimism such that they won’t participate as strongly?  Or will it motivate them to even higher levels of activism?  And how will that translate to your organization’s turnover and engagement rates?

This is what’s so great about data.  They let you connect import dots.  Also, they always raise more questions than answers – but if you’re interested and aware you’ll start asking more of the right questions and connecting critical dots.  And who knows?  That could lead to formulating more effective people management and business risk mitigation strategies.

Isn’t that what HR is all about?

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Filed under Bureau of Labor Statistics, Connecting Dots, Engagement, Glassdoor, HR, HR Data, Turnover

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