2012's Job Opportunities Won't Be Much Better



The new year won’t provide much relief to the unemployed next year as managers don’t plan on doing any more hiring than they did in 2011.
A new survey from CareerBuilder polled 3,000 hiring mangers of which 23% said they plan to hire full-time employees in 2012 while 16% said they plan to cut back their staff. Those figures are in line with 2011′s outlook.
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But there is some good news (if you can call it that): The outlook is much better than it was at the end of 2008 where 14% of employers planned to hire new employees and 16% planned cuts.
Careerbuilder notes that there’s a good chance that actual hiring in 2012 will be better than employers’ initial predictions.
“Historically, companies have been reserved in anticipating future hiring needs. Follow-up surveys done by CareerBuilder throughout the year typically find that employers hire more and downsize less than initially foreseen,” the job search site says.
Small businesses are expected to increase hiring in 2012 with 16% of companies with fewer than 50 employees planning to add a new employee–a 2% increase from last year. Larger companies with less than 250 employees have even better potential with 20% of them planning to add staff.
There’s also good news for those who are already employed. According to the survey 62% of employers are planning to increase compensation in 2012.
Says CarreerBuilder’s CEO Matt Ferguson, “Not surprisingly, the jobs that are most likely to command a raise next year are those that impact the bottom line. The functional areas in which employers said they’d most likely offer raises include sales, information technology, engineering and business development, in that order.”

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