Southeast Michigan employment levels were on the upswing during the first two quarters of this year, and the forecast for the third quarter is even rosier, said Colby Spencer Cesaro, director of research for the Detroit-based Workforce Intelligence Network for Southeast Michigan.
“It’s a slow recovery, but we’re getting there, and employers need workers. Job postings are off the charts,” Cesaro added.
More than 20,000 jobs were added to the region’s payrolls in this year’s second quarter. Since the second quarter of last year, there have been about 30,000 more jobs, states the WIN second-quarter market report.
From the first to the second quarter of this year, online job postings gained 15 percent, or 122,000 posts, marking the highest quarter ever recorded.
Postings rose by 7 percent throughout the nine-county WIN region, the report states.
“We saw a lot of growth throughout the region,” Cesaro said. But job growth was especially brisk in Wayne and Oakland counties, which had the lion’s share of the postings.
Wayne County is responsible for 37.7 percent of the postings in the second quarter, a 40 percent increase in postings over last year. Half of those postings were in the city of Detroit, Cesaro said.
In the second quarter, Oakland County had 33 percent of the postings, which is a 44 percent increase over last year. “It’s on a linear upward trajectory,” she said, “which is different than previous quarters when there were more ups and downs.”
Unexpected was the posting data for Livingston County. Although it represents less than 2 percent of the WIN region, it saw its job postings jump more than 50 percent from a year ago. “It’s primarily a bedroom community, but as the population grows more employers are also growing there and that requires more hiring,” Cesaro said.
Cesaro said the burgeoning number of postings shows employers are increasing their use of online postings to find employees. Skilled trades and construction companies tend not to post and rely on unions and word of mouth to get job candidates.
The report showed top in-demand jobs were software developers with 5,649 postings, registered nurses with 4,519 postings, and heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers with 4,097 posts. Sales reps and retail salespersons also ranked high as in-demand professions.
WIN is a collaborative effort between nine community colleges and seven Michigan Works agencies to create a workforce development system in Southeast Michigan.
