To provide accurate and timely employment forecasts for business leaders, Express Employment Professionals International Headquarters commissions an ongoing Job Insights survey to track employment and hiring trends across a wide range of industries.
Hiring Growth Remains Hopeful in 2023
U.S. hiring decision-makers remain optimistic about the future of the workforce, with the most common feelings attributed to hiring in 2023 being positive (75%) – including optimism (43%), hopefulness (38%), and confidence (36%). According to hiring decision-makers, in the first half of 2023:
- 60% plan to increase the number of employees at their company
- 31% expect no change to the number of employees/that it will stay the same
- 7% anticipate a decrease in employee count
Finding Qualified Candidates and Increased Turnover Among Challenges in 2023
Companies are facing the challenge of finding applicants, let alone those with the appropriate skills. However, with positions remaining unfilled and turnover increasing, a heavy burden is being placed on the employees who are left. As a result, companies must find ways to alleviate the burnout for those who remain.
Despite the positive outlook of U.S. hiring decision-makers regarding the future of hiring, 91% expect to face challenges, including:
- Finding qualified candidates (52%)
- Increased competition in the job market (31%)
- Available talent pool not matching the company’s needs (27%)
- Difficulty assessing candidates’ skills during the hiring process (22%)
- Their pay not being competitive (21%)
- Reaching diverse candidates (20%)
While there may be challenges for hiring in the future, 45% of decision-makers say they currently have open positions they can’t fill, commonly due to a lack of applicants. For those who have open positions still unfilled, they say it is due to a lack of applicants who possess these qualifications:
- Relevant experience (47%)
- Hard skills (46%)
- Applicants in general (40%)
- Soft skills (31%)
Another challenge companies are facing is turnover. More than a third of U.S. hiring decision-makers (35%) predict employee turnover at their company will increase this year—a proportion not seen since the spring of 2020 (34%).
Flexible Hours Are in High Demand, Yet Companies Hesitant to Offer
Flexibility in the work environment appears important to American jobseekers. When given the option of working an 8-hour day with a flexible start time, traditional 9-5, or a compressed schedule such as four 10-hour days, jobseekers most commonly pick an 8-hour day with a flexible start time (40%), while nearly 1 in 5 job seekers (18%) would most prefer a compressed schedule.
More than 9 in 10 U.S. hiring decision-makers (94%) with non-traditional work schedules report that employees at their company are productive – with nearly half (48%) saying they are very productive currently. And, if given the ability to design their own schedules, hiring decision-makers feel employees would have about the same level of productivity (53%) or even be more productive (35%).
Still, there appears to be some hesitation in companies offering this amount of flexibility.
Three quarters of U.S. hiring decision-makers (75%) say they have concerns in their company offering flexible work hours – including:
- Decreased productivity (30%)
- Increased distractions (29%)
- Delayed communications (28%)
- An inability of employees to collaborate (28%)
The survey was conducted online within the U.S. by The Harris Poll on behalf of Express between Dec. 1 and 15, 2022, among 1,002 U.S. hiring decision-makers (defined as adults ages 18+ in the U.S. who are employed full-time or self-employed, work at companies with more than one employee, and have full/significant involvement in hiring decisions at their company). Data were weighted where necessary by company size to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population.
Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in our surveys. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within + 3.2 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. This credible interval will be wider among subsets of the surveyed population of interest.
An omnibus survey also was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Express Employment Professionals from Dec. 13-15, 2022 among 2,041 adults ages 18 and older, of which 1,232 are employed and 969 identify as jobseekers. Data are weighted where necessary by age, gender, race/ethnicity, region, education, marital status, household size, household income and propensity to be online, to bring them in line with their actual proportions in the population. Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in our surveys. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within + 2.8 percentage points using a 95% confidence level.
No comments yet.