Hiring in 2019: A Review

Overall, 2019 was a great year for the job market. While there may have been a few hiccups along the way, it was a historic year for hiring managers and job seekers. Now, moving forward into 2020, we can only hope that recruiting trends continue in this direction.

As we look back and review data from over the past year, here were some of the highs and lows for hiring in 2019:

The good news

Job openings reached a record high in 2019, especially in the industries of healthcare, education and manufacturing. In the month of November alone, 45,000 new jobs became available in the healthcare space. As a result of there being more jobs to go around, less people are struggling to find work and having to file unemployment insurance claims.

The average rate of unemployment was only 3.5%, which is the lowest it's been in 50 years. After the housing crisis of 2008, the unemployment rate was 10%. Clearly, the progress made in average employment over the last decade has been extraordinary, which is gratifying for both job seekers and recruiters.

The bad news

While 2019 was a generally positive year, there are certain areas that will hopefully see improvement in 2020. In particular, the growth of wages for workers was weaker than expected. While the hourly pay for production/nonsupervisory employees increased by 3.7%, the average across all industries was only 5.6%.

Also, even though more jobs are opening up at more organizations, recruiters have had a difficult time finding qualified candidates. The consensus in the recruitment field is that it's becoming harder to hire people with the necessary skills for certain positions, mainly because of the great amount of competition. Most people who apply for jobs lack the experience and technical skills required, while qualified candidates get hired very quickly.

Interested in seeing more data about job recruitment in 2019? Check out our infographic below!