By David Lewis
September was an active month for the Westchester County job market with a sizeable increase in open jobs posted of almost 18 percent vs. August, across multiple industries and towns.
As September tends to be a month where activity picks up after the typical slowdown for the late summer months, this news is both encouraging and not unexpected. With that said, Westchester is showing signs of bucking the trend the rest of the country is setting, with tepid job market activity results on a national basis.
Some key items of note regarding September:
Ӣ White Plains continues to show itself as the hub of job market activity, followed this month by Tarrytown and Yonkers.
Ӣ The industries most actively hiring this past month were health care, financial services and accounting.
Ӣ Top job categories were administrative, nursing and sales.
In looking at this month”™s data there a few story lines. The county entered the month with a 6.3 percent unemployment rate compared with an 8 percent rate in January. Most of that gap was closed in Q1 2013, when the unemployment level dropped to 6.1 percent. Since April, similar to neighboring counties, the number has languished. The national job market report for September was not released as scheduled due to the budget impasse, but other private-sector reports suggest that the rest of the country was neutral in job growth and slightly below expectations. That places Westchester ahead of the pack in job growth, a very positive sign.
One characteristic that consistently shows on job market reports throughout the region and for that matter the country is the number of companies trying to find talent to fill sales related roles. Post a position today on any job board in America for a sales role and you are likely to see it listed on page 2 or worse within 24 hours, all because so many sales-related positions are posted each day. Parts of the theory subscribed to by market watchers, including this one, is that small businesses have no infrastructure to train raw sales talent and as such are looking for experienced professionals. With that said those experienced are likely successful and leery of jumping to something new. Further, the learning and earning curve for a new sales job is typically estimated at six months or more before true productivity and corresponding commissions will arrive.
As Westchester County goes the interesting storyline will be whether or not the uncertainty surrounding the budget impasse and debt ceiling debate will force area businesses to take a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to further hiring and expansion. Stay tuned.
David Lewis is president/CEO of WestchesterCountyJobs.com, the region”™s most prolific job board with more than 100,000 area visitors a month to his network of job boards to view jobs from over 4,000 area employers. His monthly reports will address the condition of the job market as measured by data from his sites, as well as data from state, federal and industry sources in the public domain. You can learn more about David and his team at WestchesterCountyJobs.com.
