Hiring Demand for Recruiters Continues to Grow Despite Recent Employment Reports

Although the pace of US job growth appears to be slowing for most sectors, hiring demand for recruiters by corporate HR departments and staffing agencies has boomed this year, up 64% since January. On a year-over-year basis, demand was up 36% over May 2010, with over 10,100 new job ads posted. Hiring by direct employers made up the bulk of this activity, with over 6,600 ads or 66% of overall demand. Demand by direct employers has also increased at a faster pace, up 44% over May 2010 vs. a 24% increase for staffing agencies.

Hiring Demand for Personnel Recruiters – 4 Years:

Source: WANTED Analytics™

Demand for recruiters increased in all of the top 25 metro areas over May 2010: metro NYC still has more than double the demand for recruiters as metro LA, the next highest, but the hottest growth spots were the Minneapolis, Columbus, and Raleigh metro areas, all with gains of more than 100% over May 2010.

Top 25 Metro Areas by Hiring Demand —

Recruiters — May 2011 vs 2010:

Source: WANTED Analytics™

Although metro NYC and LA have the greatest hiring demand and double-digit growth from May 2010, filling positions in these locations is only of average difficulty because they also has the largest talent supplies, with 18,000 potential candidates in the metro NYC area, and 6,600 in LA. It's a different story in northern California: our Hiring Scale™ metrics show San Francisco and San Jose each with 9 candidates for every position. Sacramento, which is not in the top 25 metro areas, would be a good place to source talent for San Francisco and San Jose. There are 16 candidates for each position in Sacramento, and a talent pool not much smaller than that of San Jose, competing there for less than half as many open positions.

Hiring Scale Metrics for San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento Metro Areas:

Source: WANTED Analytics™

Comment by Scott Pugh on June 9, 2011 at 7:07pm: I started in October 2008!

Comment by Sallie-Anne on June 10, 2011 at 3:34am: Looks like you're still standing Scott, well done!

Comment by Frank Mulligan on June 12, 2011 at 10:45pm: Carolyn, A similar thing happened late last year and at the beginning of this year in China. Companies started to build hiring and sourcing teams.

Since then the recruitment market has gone ballistic, with multiple offers back on the table, and graduate recruitment coming out of a slump. Announcements of big hiring volumes are commonplace.

In theory the US should follow the same path...otherwise why hire all those Recruiters? The only question is how quickly the hiring is going to be done. China is not a good comparison, with 9% annual economic growth.