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| Service-oriented: Sam Alalam is a hairdresser at Leeba Salon in Boston. Nicole Hill |
Service work props up US job market
So far this year, the nation has added 815,000 service jobs.
from the July 9, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Higher paychecks
One encouraging sign, Mr. Reed says, is that workers are finally getting paid better. On a year-over-year basis, pay is up about 4 percent. "Greater demand for jobs translates into greater pay for workers," he says.
The workforce also appears to be spending more time on the job. Last month, the workweek in the private sector increased by 0.3 percent. Since the economy started the quarter with a decline in hours worked, it indicates a much stronger economy, says Bob Brusca of Fact & Opinion Economics in New York. "The economy put on a big push in June," says Mr. Brusca.
Corporate America also seems to have changed its hiring psychology. When the economy first started to turn around in 2001-02, executives were reluctant to take on more head count. It became known as the "jobless recovery."
Now, executives seem to be interested in filling jobs quickly. "They are worried. They have been burned too many times with not enough people or the right people, so they just keep hiring," says John Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm in Chicago. He estimates that more than 80 percent of his company's placements are for service-sector jobs.
Some new jobs are in surprising places. United Airlines, which has pared its workforce over the past six years, announced last month it would hire 100 new pilots and would recall other pilots who were laid off.
The airline industry is stretched so thin that staffing issues are hurting its ability to fly on time. Last Friday, for example, ExpressJet, which flies routes for Continental Airlines, was unable to get a flight attendant from Burlington, Vt., to Newark, N.J., for five hours. As a result, Flight 2764, scheduled to leave at 3:55 p.m., did not get off the ground until 10 p.m. Reserve flight attendants had already been sent on another flight, a spokeswoman for the airline says.
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