$100K+ Job Market Still Has Bright Spots

June 30, 2008 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Pockets of job market growth continue to emerge in the technology, health care and defense sectors, according to a job site focusing on those earning $100,000 or above.

According to TheLadders.com’s Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report for Q208, which tracks hiring patterns in 20 major cities and surveys job seekers nationwide, while hiring in the financial and consumer discretionary sectors has been impacted by the continued fallout from the mortgage market collapse, the technology, health care, and defense sectors are all adding to their executive-level ranks nationwide.

“There were 12,000 more $100,000+ jobs posted on TheLadders.com in the first quarter of 2008 than there were in the first quarter of 2007,” said Marc Cenedella, president and CEO of TheLadders.com, in a news release. “The recession is grabbing the headlines, but there are always countercyclical segments of the market that thrive in a down economy; we’re seeing a lot of reliance in this marketplace.”

Hot Markets

The regional markets with the most favorable $100,000+ climates were San Francisco, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Boston. The ratio of job seekers to job postings sits at a favorable 2:1 in San Francisco, 3.1 in San Diego, and 4:1 in Washington, Seattle, and Boston, according to the report.

Markets attracting the highest number of job seekers from other parts of the country are New York, San Francisco, and Boston. Tampa and Detroit continue to be among the tightest markets.

Some of the top companies posting the most open positions are BAE Systems, Cisco Systems, Deloitte, General Dynamics, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, PayPal, and Sepracor, the report said.

Other results included:

  • 71% of $100,000+ job seekers said they have noticed a slowdown in interview opportunities this quarter.
  • 58% of those surveyed described the high-end job markets in their cities as stable, and 59% said they expect to land a new job in six months or less.
  • 64% of the job seekers surveyed said they were willing to move from their current cities for a new job opportunity. Another 42% said they are actively looking for new job opportunities in cities outside of their own.

City-by-city data and survey results are available at http://www.theladders.com/static/boom/ .

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