Employment: Good News or Bad News?

Is our state of unemployment good news or bad news? That depends upon your point of view. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate now stands at 2.8%.

That is good for some and not-so-good for others. If you find yourself looking for or thinking of looking for employment, this is likely a better time to be doing that.

If you are looking for employees, this may be a trying time especially if your business is booming and orders/jobs are coming your way with delivery/completion deadlines.

WFA Staffing finds itself on both ends of this equation. We are obviously in the business of hunting for the right people to fill job orders we receive from our client organization. The low unemployment numbers suggest that we will need a longer lead-time to find the right people for our employer clients. That will likely hold true for everything from the laborer to the seasoned executive and all levels in-between.

This also can mean that we will find the expectations of candidates higher in terms of compensation and benefits offered. We see solid business expansion in our state from very large organizations down to the smaller organizations that provide product and human support to those organizations.The old saying that “a rising tide raises all ships” might be useful to help us visualize the situation. At 2.8%, the unemployment rate is about as low as anyone can remember.

Even lower-level unskilled blue collar workers are going to be scarce and, when available, looking for higher hourly rates than we’ve seen for a while.

Production workers are going to be susceptible to higher wage offers and employers could be blind-sided by sudden departures…sometimes with scant notice given the demand.

The ranks of the professional and semi-professional staff people have seen more difficult, and therefore longer, searches recently. This is likely to exacerbate these searches both from the ‘time required’ as well as from the price tag. Our message is the same for those who need people as well as for those wanting to ‘test the waters’.

Start now if you’ve not already begun. Be patient since there will be a lot of activity in all areas of employment.  If you’ve thought about a change, this is a good time to look into that. In either case, give us a call.

Tom Krist, CEO