Where Is All of the Talent?

In the November Trends Magazine (www.trends-magazine.com) they break the unemployment numbers down by education. The results are interesting and help to explain the misalignment in numbers of unemployed versus the inability to find good talent. Here are the numbers:


Total Unemployment= 9.8%
College degree or higher= 4.8%
Some college= 7%
High school diploma= 10%
No diploma= 15%

In our business, we deal almost exclusively with college-educated people. Not every position requires a degree, but it's fairly rare for us to identify a client need where college is not highly preferred. As such, the pool of candidates we're fishing in is highly employed. 4.8% employment is close to maximum. About 3 years ago, the rate for college educated was 3% and that was a low point. So the economic 'crash' has rendered an additional 1.8% of college-educated people unemployed. Still a lot of people, and still not acceptable, but the reality of finding talent in a 4.8% unemployment market is difficult.

Robert Half survey results find that 47% of managers felt there was a shortage of qualified applicants. A 4.8% unemployment rate substantiates that survey.

Trends Magazine speaks to the macro-economic realities of our economy and how our education system has not well-prepared the next generation of managers. where mental skills are more in demand than labor. There is a huge shortage of engineers right now and it is projected to get much worse. The current unemployment stats paint a pretty poor picture for anyone who is a laborer.

The talent market is very thin, and has been thin for the past 2-3 years. It will get much worse over the next 10 years, starting in 2010. With the stock market resurging, the 401K accounts of baby boomers will be returned to levels that will provide comfortable retirement and they will return to their retirement plans they had constructed prior to the Great Recession. So what exactly is the 'good news'?

Talent right now is affordable. The quality people who are employed are nervous. They're looking for stability and a chance for advancement. Their current employer has gone through multiple RIF's and everyone is nervous about the next one; will I have a job and if so what will my career path look like in a down-sized version of the company? That talent is available, affordable and open to solicitation.

That window will close in the next 6 months. Once the economy is perceived as growing, the talent market will shift immediately to increasing salaries, signing bonuses and a series of counter-offer attempts to keep existing talent. The next 5-10 years will be a slugfest for talent as the pool of talent for senior positions is rendered dangerously thin by sheer virtue of the exodus of the boomers.