The demand for top-quality professionals across a number of sectors will remain high in 2007, said Washington area recruiters, as companies gear up to expand their staffs in a region with an exceptionally low unemployment rate.
Companies across the region plan to hire more workers in a number of departments this year, according to a survey by HireStrategy, a Reston-based staffing firm. The firm surveys dozens of its clients each year to take the pulse of the job market. This year’s survey saw a slight uptick in hiring plans, with companies planning to expand their sales staffs by 12 percent to 15 percent and their technology workers by 8 percent to 10 percent. Accounting and finance departments are expecting to grow by between 6 percent and 8 percent.
But those projections may be hard to fulfill in a job market where the unemployment rate is unusually low. The Washington region’s 3.5 percent unemployment rate is a full percentage point below the nation’s and Northern Virginia hovers just above 2 percent.
“There’s a real gap, a shortage [of quality employees],” said Paul Villella, president and CEO of HireStrategy. “[The region] has a very strong labor pool … but the bad news for employers is the companies are so successful, they’ve saturated the labor pool.”
Particularly hot areas in Washington include financial services, health care and, as always, technology, said Nels Olsen, who heads up the Washington office of global recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International.
But while overall the job market should remain tight, companies that focus on federal contracting may not need to expand in 2007. The influx of federal spending post-Sept. 11 pumped billions of dollars into many local companies, but an anticipated slowdown in new contracts could translate into a slow down in hiring.
“I think [the job market] is going to get a little bit looser,” said Gerald Gordon, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. “The reason it got so tight was because people were moving to the region [to work for defense-related companies].”
However, Gordon said workers are likely to simply shift their focus rather than leave the region.
“People tend to come here not just for a job, but for a career,” he said.
