The Top 10 Hardest Jobs to Fill

The economy is sputtering, and companies say they will make nothing but perfect-10 hires. Meanwhile, Baby Boomers are retiring by the millions — and everyone wants to be a millionaire, not a wage earner. Where does all this leave employers and workers in their never-ending struggle to tip the balance in the American labor market?

From the perspective of an annual survey commissioned by staffing firm Manpower, these dynamics yield a number of occupations for which openings are hard to fill. Among white-collar jobs, the following positions make Manpower’s 10 Hardest Jobs to Fill list: engineers, technicians, sales reps, accountants and IT staff. And on the blue-collar side, the list includes machinists and machine operators, skilled tradespeople, mechanics, laborers and production operators.

But labor-market power is shifting toward employers as the economy continues to soften. While in Manpower’s 2007 survey of 2,000 US firms 41 percent of employers reported difficulties filling positions, the 2008 tally found only about half that percentage of companies — 22 percent — reported recruitment was a struggle. This should come as no surprise, given that American employers shed about a quarter of a million jobs in the first four months of 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

And many experts, especially labor advocates, take issue with the Manpower study’s conclusion that all these occupations are in shortage. “Our starting point at EPI is where most economists would start: If you don’t have low unemployment and rising wages, you don’t have a shortage,” says Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

So if you work in one of these occupations — or want to — what’s the real story? Let’s take a look at the survey results and get some perspective on what the shortages really mean.

White-Collar Occupations Blow in the Winds of Economic Change

Even as thousands of IT jobs continue to be offshored each year, demand for software developers, systems engineers and network administrators is strong, according to the Manpower survey.

with the lines of business and can “One of the challenges that IT departments face is finding people who are well-rounded, can communicatemanage,” says Melanie Holmes, a vice president at Manpower North America.

With fuel prices spiking and oil and natural gas exploration heating up, demand for petroleum engineers is rising. Offshoring notwithstanding, “engineering is going to be around for awhile,” says Holmes. “Oil companies have employees averaging in their late 40s.”

to Eisenbrey says EPI data shows labor shortages in a number of white-collar niches, from healthcare workerslibrarians, farm managers, engineering managers and environmental scientists.

Some Blue-Collar Jobs Go Unfilled Even as Their Numbers Drop

Even after decades of manufacturing decline, employment of machinists is expected to drop by 3 percent between 2006 and 2016, according to the BLS.

“We’re at the very beginning of that decline; we haven’t necessarily gotten there yet,” says Holmes. “Even if machinists are declining, applicants are in short supply. Kids are not getting excited about going to tech and vocational schools.”

Labor advocates paint a different picture. “Employers are still not willing to pay what’s required,” says Eisenbrey. “It’s a shortage only at the rate that employers want to pay.”

The skilled trades, especially in construction, rank high among blue-collar jobs that are hard to fill, according to the Manpower survey. Carpenters, welders, plumbers, electricians and masons are in demand, the survey says.

But Eisenbrey questions the validity of these conclusions. “It doesn’t make sense that jobs for construction workers and laborers are hard to fill,” he says. “Wages are declining in most of these occupations; 365,000 of those workers have been laid off in the last 12 months.” In April 2008, as the housing crisis played out, construction employment declined by 61,000 jobs, according to preliminary data from the BLS.

Even in our digital age, stuff still needs to get from here to there, whether the trip is across the warehouse floor or around the world. That’s why jobs for laborers such as freight, stock and materials handlers are projected to increase by almost a quarter of a million positions from 2004 to 2014, according to the BLS. Many of these jobs require few skills but pay $12 to $15 an hour, about double the federal minimum wage, which is set to rise to $6.55 from $5.85 on July 24, 2008.

 

Sincere Interest Can Take You Far in Your Career

Remember the last time you met someone with whom you wound up having a great deal in common? Remember that “aha” moment when you learned the other person shared one of your strong passions? You probably ended up talking to each other about that common interest for the next hour or two, completely losing track of time along the way.

You didn’t even have to try to connect with the other person. It just happened, simply because you were both enthusiastic about a certain something.

The same thing goes on all the time in the world of work, and you can cultivate it in your career exploration or search for an internship or entry-level job. By simply sharing with people what you’re sincerely interested in and asking them for their advice and ideas, you can uncover or even create all sorts of opportunities that will help your career development.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose you’re a college sophomore majoring in environmental studies, because you have deep-seated feelings and beliefs about environmental protection. If you could find some people who are currently working in environmental protection and tell them about your strong interest in the field, you would almost certainly connect with some similar-thinking professionals (and other students) who would gladly open your eyes to career-related opportunities.

How could you find such people? Several ways:

Join a Professional Organization

Hundreds of professional organizations target people who have an interest in environmental issues, and several of these groups are aimed specifically at students. The Student Conservation Association, for example, offers conservation service opportunities, outdoor education and career training for students interested in the field. As importantly, though, it can expose you to a significant network of people to share your passion with.

Meanwhile, professional organizations like the National Environmental Health Association have dozens of state chapters. Find the chapter in your state, join it and attend meetings and conferences to find hundreds of people in the field with whom you can discuss your common concerns — and uncover employment opportunities.

Go on Informational Interviews

Informational interviewing is just a fancy term for talking to people about their jobs. In the vast majority of cases, if you ask someone whose job interests you to talk to you about that job, the person will happily do so. Why? Because you’ve shown interest in something he feels strongly about and people love talking about themselves and what they do.

With the explosion of the Internet, you don’t even need to live in the same area as the person you want to talk to. Instead of or in addition to an in-person interview, you can contact people by email and speak to them that way at their convenience. (Often, you can email people who seem too famous or too inaccessible to talk to you and be surprised when they respond, sometimes with much more information and advice than you would have expected, solely because you’ve shown sincere interest in them and what they do.)

Volunteer

There is perhaps no better way to prove your strong interest in a certain field than to volunteer with an organization in that field. After all, you won’t be getting paid for your efforts, so the people you’re working for and with have to conclude you’re contributing simply because you enjoy the field so much.

In many cities, the local chapter of the United Way serves as a clearinghouse for hundreds of volunteer opportunities in the area. So if you were interested in volunteering in an environmental capacity, you could check with the nearest United Way chapter and see what possibilities exist.

Just as you might hit it off with someone at a party, you can also hit it off with someone in the world of work. And that someone, seeing your sincere interest, will more often than not be flattered to introduce you to the many career-related opportunities that await you. All you have to do is ask.