Lucy is a fresh software engineering graduate. Like her batch mates, she too is scouring the Internet, college employment notice boards and the local newspapers for a job. She has not yet landed a job, but is hopeful of landing one soon. Her brother Mark is envious of her. He had passed out in 2001, when the software industry was reeling under the effect of the burst of the dotcom bubble. Luckily, for Lucy, the job market is much better now than what it was in 2001. Her friend, a liberal arts graduate is also hopeful of landing up a decent job. The reason is that the current job market is more vibrant and is offering a variety of jobs requiring different skill sets.

Today the job market requires people who are multi-talented and multi-skilled. Technology has played a big role in inventing such a need. Take the case of tax professionals. One of their basic jobs was to help the salaried class to fill out the details of their income tax return. With the availability of various user friendly tax calculating software, an increased number of people can now fill in their details without the need to consult a tax professional. This has seriously undermined the traditional role played by a tax consultant. The focus has now shifted to professionals who can deliver tax planning and advisory services according to individual needs.

A person aspiring to get a job in today’s market also has to be aware of different cultures and practices followed in various countries. The advent of the net has shrunk the entire world into a global village. A customer sitting in India can bag projects from clients in USA. In such a case it will be necessary for the Indian company to understand the needs and expectations of the American customer and deliver the projects accordingly. An Indian firm specializing in content writing has to use ‘color’ instead of ‘colour’ while delivering a project to a US client. Thus jobs nowadays require that a person should be well read and keep good knowledge of his immediate surroundings and also the world around him.

The advent of the Internet has also seen a large number of jobs being off shored to countries like India, South Africa etc. This also changes the work culture in these countries. Take the example of a call center; most of the call centers service American clients. The time difference between USA and India is about nine hours. In such a case, the Indian center will receive maximum calls after it is midnight in India. As a result the call centers have brought the culture of working in night shifts that was hitherto reserved to industries like manufacturing etc.

Another noticeable change taking place in the job market is that most of the jobs created are in the service sector. The United States Department of Labor for instance reported that education and health services added around 60,000 jobs in August and the finance and related sector created 26,000 jobs in US alone. This trend can be observed round the globe. As per a report that appeared in the Associated Press, service sector makes up for two-third of the US economy. Even in a developing country like India, the service sector has been the star performer. This is perhaps also a reason as to why the number of employees engaged in the service sector has shown a steady increase in the past decade. For e.g. as per ILO, the number of people employed in the service sector in the world has increased from 34.5% in 1995 to 38.9% in 2005. This is against the employment level in the industry sector that has remained stagnant at 21% between the periods from 1995-2005. The interesting fact to be noted is that females constitute 45% of the workforce in the service sector, which is higher than other sectors such as industry and agriculture.

Another noticeable change has been the increased participation of adult females in the workforce. For e.g. the share of employed adult males has seen a decline of 1.3% in the decade between 1995-2005. On the other hand, the share of females has increased from 51.7% in 1995 to 52.2% in 2005. It has also been noticed that the service sector has seen the largest share of working women. Females constitute 45% of the workforce in service sector.

Mergers and acquisitions are becoming the order of the day. Whether it is the bitter acquisition of Arcelor by the Mittal group or the Citigroup’s US$2.7 billiontakeover of KorAm bank in South Korea; the fact is that most of the mergers leads to job cuts. A report by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas states that most of the tech job cuts can be attributed to mergers and acquisitions. The report puts the number of job loss due to mergers and acquisitions at 24,821 in 2006.

1. For e.g. according to World Economic Forum, UK labor force will start to shrink in 2010, declining further during the 2020s and only easing in the 2030s.

On the other hand, the World Economic Forum states that In India, on the other hand, the number of working-age people will increase by 335 million by 2030 – almost as much as the total working-age population of the EU and the United States combined in 2000.

The above-mentioned fact makes one thing clear: Expect a lot of migration and major upheaval in the job market in the years to come.

The job market is thus becoming more and more unpredictable. One has to possess many skills and be efficient in this age of cutthroat competition. Also, the skill set has to be continuously upgraded and updated to survive the onslaught of job cuts.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/human-resources-articles/changes-taking-place-in-the-job-market-1104428.html

About the author: Dakotta J.K. Alex, social venture director and author of “Damn, I Need a Job. Again!” and “The Recruiters Guide Book,” is a Global HR Solutions Consultant specializing in human capital recruitment, process management and career analysis in the US, Europe and China. With over 9 years of consultancy experience he has found his niche in the social networking arena and now runs the 3rd largest recruiting network forum http://www.RecruiterGroups.com in addition to a candidate / recruiter forum known as http://www.AskTheRecruiter.com. Information regarding Dakotta’s other ventures, books, and articles can be found at http://www.dakotta.com.