Hiring Trends, Skills Gaps, and Where the Workers Are   After the great recession (2007 - 2009 - officially), the economy's recovery began in 2010, and has been gaining strength since then. Here are some key statistics that show were we are are now, and where critical skills gaps remain that could impact our economic growth.   KEY INSIGHTS   · Hiring strong and stable through April – In April, hiring across the U.S. was 19.8% higher than in April 2017. Seasonally-adjusted hiring, nationally, was 2.1% higher in April than in March 2018. The industries with the biggest year-over-year hiring increases in April were aerospace, automotive, and transportation...

Paid Family Leave - The Hot New Recruiting Tool?   Only three states — California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island — currently offer paid family and medical leave.RI will join them effective July. 1, 2018, after passing the Paid Family Leave Benefits Law during the 2016 session.    Ten others (CT, DC, HI, ME, MA, OR, VT, WA, WI) offer unpaid medical leave, while 11 other states offer school related parental leave.   A recent article by Lydia Dishman, with Fast Company, looks at the trend and what it means to families, companies, and recruiters.   "When her 17-year old son needed partial hospitalization for symptoms arising from his Asperger’s syndrome, Marcia Haugstad, a...

Most companies will tell you that their employees are their most valuable asset. Many of them mean it, but then fail to invest in this valuable asset. Without investment, the asset will loss it's value over time. Even those who invest (and one way to do this is to provide training) frequently don't really know what they are getting for their investment. Usually, the primarily sticking point is that companies don't know how to assess the ROI of their training. Like many business problems, it helps to approach it with an easily understandable metric. Specifically, what are the costs and what are...