CareerBuilder’s Annual Jobs Forecast and 2016 Market Predictions

CareerBuilder recently released its yearly jobs forecast, with several notable predictions for the year 2016. In addition to predictions of higher wages, the jobs forecast also revealed several trends related to the hiring of temporary employees and those with more limited skill sets. 

As the economy continues to gain momentum, this year, like the one before, will be favorable to candidates. While more than one third of companies plan to increase full-time hiring (with financial services, IT, and Healthcare citing the highest percentages of increase), 47% of companies plan to hire temporary workers in 2016, with 58% citing plans to transition those temporary contractors to full-time employees.

The hottest areas companies are hiring in? Customer service tops the list at 32%, with IT and Sales coming in close behind it (at 29 and 27% respectively). Other areas included on the list were: Production, Administrative, Marketing, Business Development, HR, Finance & Accounting, and Engineering.

Wages are expected to increase across all levels, with 83% of employers planning to offer salary raises for existing employees, and 66% planning to increase starting salaries for new talent.

In addition, as companies continue to struggle to compete for skilled talent, many have decided to invest resources into the hiring and training of low-skill workers for higher-skill level jobs. Economists view the lack of skilled workers as a threat to the U.S. economy, however training programs developed by companies to bring those workers up to speed will likely offset the problem.

With support from jobs forecast data, it will be up to companies to decide how to navigate the current job market in order to attract and retain talent – while some are choosing to increase the amount of contract employers they hire, others are working to offer higher wages or developing training programs.  Regardless of how organizations choose to compete for today’s workforce, it will be important for them to understand the overall trends of where hiring is moving this year.