U.S. Hiring Trends
Report: 2016
Occupation and
Opportunity
The Shifting Ground for Middle Class
Jobs in a Changing America
© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
In 2008, it was “change has
come to America” and in 2016 it
was “renewing the American dream.”
Each of the last two U.S. presidential transitions
acknowledged some aspect of the profound
transitions that have been occurring in American
society and the U.S. economy. While it’s
common for politicians to position themselves
as change agents, this was not empty rhetoric.
Eight years apart, these soundbites reflect that
long-term trends are at play.
In the 2016 campaign, the economy was
in focus once again, but the discussions
revolved around trade and manufacturing,
rather than financial crisis. For many people,
the manufacturing industry is crucial to the
U.S. middle class, because of its reputation
for providing stable, well-paying blue-collar
jobs. Many contrast this with service-providing
industries, where job growth has been faster,
but higher levels of education are often in
demand or jobs may be less stable. Yet there
is much more to manufacturing employment
than the stereotype of machinists and assembly
line workers, and having a realistic view of
that can inform one’s vision for the role of
manufacturing in both the U.S. economy as
a whole and in individuals’ educational and
career plans. Moreover, like other industries,
manufacturing itself is constantly changing, and
its employment base changes in response.
To grasp the current state of play, it helps to
look at data, and that is where iCIMS comes
in. All data needs to be interpreted in context,
so this report, the last of its quarterly series,
compares the composition of job hires in 2016
across a group of industries. We chose four
to reflect different aspects of the changing
U.S. economy: manufacturing, retail trade,
healthcare & social assistance, and professional
& business services.
To better understand the hiring landscape,
iCIMS looked at not only who is hiring, but
what they are hiring for – which skills and
occupations are most in demand by which kinds
of employers. We also looked at how many
people are applying for select categories of jobs
and the prevalence of full-time versus other
kinds of jobs. The result is a snapshot of the
U.S. job market as it stands poised for the next
chapter of its history.
Josh Wright
iCIMS Chief Economist
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© 2016
2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
Table of Contents
Key Findings 4
Post-Industrial Transitions in U.S. Industries and Occupations 4
Jobs in Key Industries 7
Healthcare Jobs: Concentrated in Direct Services 7
Retail Trade Jobs: Focus on Sales 8
Professional & Business Service Jobs: Strength in Diversity 9
Manufacturing Jobs: Beyond the Factory Floor Supply and Demand in Individual Occupations 3
© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
Key Findings
Occupation Types of Hires Across Industries
Manufacturing and professional & business services hired a more broadly diversified
set of occupations than either retail trade or healthcare & social assistance.
Occupations focused on computers and math contributed about 9% of positions to not
only professional & business services, but also manufacturing, compared to 1% or less
for healthcare and retail.
Full-Time Versus Other Arrangements
The prevalence of part-time work was highest in the retail trade industry:
43%, compared to at most 18% among the others.
The healthcare industry hired by far the largest proportion of contingent positions:
18%, compared to at most 4% among the others.
Supply and Demand for Individual Occupations
White-collar positions received substantially more applicants, on average,
than the blue-collar and so-called pink-collar (service-oriented) positions.
Some common medical positions may be harder to fill than programming positions.
Managerial positions received some of the largest numbers of applicants per position.
Post-Industrial Transitions in U.S. Industries
and Occupations
Ever since the Great Recession, economic policy and job growth have featured prominently in public
debates, but the 2016 presidential election gave fresh urgency to the question of jobs for the American
middle class. One of the challenges is that the source of jobs is changing. The base of U.S. employment
has been shifting under the influence of a number of forces – primarily technology, trade, and demographics. The manufacturing industry, which once provided rich opportunities for workers who lacked
a college degree, has been contracting as a share of total payrolls. The industries with growing shares
require a different set of skills and provide different kinds of career tracks, so understanding how this
composition is shifting is crucial for understanding the changing face of opportunity in America. Put
another way, the puzzle of job growth is not just a question of which industries will be growing by how
much but also of which occupations.
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© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
iCIMS looked at hiring activity in manufacturing and three other industries to see how exactly these broad
trends are playing out in today’s workplace – not only who is hiring, but what they are hiring for. To get a
closer look at the industries in the U.S. economy that have been expanding, we narrowed in on healthcare
and professional & business services. Healthcare is expected to grow as the U.S. population continues to age
and professional & business services is expected to grow as the U.S. economy continues to shift toward
a greater reliance on providing services rather than producing goods. To compare another industry with
lower education requirements for workers but less of a secular tailwind, we also looked at retail trade. Figures
1 and 2 compare these four industries’ share of total U.S. nonfarm payrolls going back to 1990.
Figure 2:
The Growing Footprints of Healthcare and
Professional/Business Services
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
1990
1995
Recession
2000
2005
Retail
2010
2015
Manufacturing
Proportion of Total Nonfarm Payrolls
Proportion of Total Nonfarm Payrolls
Figure 1:
The Shrinking Footprints of Retail and Manufacturing
14%
13%
12%
11%
10%
9%
8%
7%
6%
1990
1995
Recession
Source: BLS
2000
Healthcare
2005
2010
2015
Professional/Business Services
Source: BLS
The contrast is stark, the implications profound. Professional & business services will create jobs primarily in
white-collar professions. Healthcare will create jobs for a variety of education levels, from the hyper-educated
MD-PhDs and subspecialty surgeons to home health aides, dental assistants, and phlebotomists. The dimmer
outlook for manufacturing and retail trade implies declining or at least changing prospects for less-educated
workers. Even if they consider a transition to healthcare, for instance, the lower-skilled health-related occupations will be very different from factory jobs in a variety of ways. Crucially, they may not provide the opportunity to advance the way entry-level manufacturing jobs once did.
Even manufacturing itself will require more than only assembly workers in factories: Automation and better
technology in the manufacturing industry has led to the need for more specialized and technical job skills,
often requiring higher education. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts that jobs in production occupations (which includes factory workers, machinists, and artisans) will decline by 3.1% between 2014 and
2024 (see figure 3). In the next section, we will look at iCIMS data to reveal how much of manufacturing
employment already stretches beyond factory workers.
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© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
In contrast, healthcare-related occupations are projected to grow between 10.5% and 23% over the same
period. Of the other occupation categories for which the BLS provides projections, only two of those that
are projected to post double-digit growth rates are not related to healthcare: construction and computers &
math (which includes software engineers and statisticians).
Figure 3:
Projected Growth in Occupations 2014-2024
Figure 4:
Occupations That Are Most Likely to Decline 2014-2024
3% 3%
10%
25
23.0%
20
16.4%
13.1%
23%
8.4%
5.5%
-3.1%
t
Production
Management & Administration
Maintenance & Repair
Protective Service
uc
pp
tiv
tio
or
d
te
Su
la
e
Re
&
s
ra
le
Ad
m
in
ist
Sa
an
M
5.0% 2.0%
t
em
en
ia
nc
ag
na
Fi
sin
es
s
&
on
C
Bu
l
n
io
ru
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-5
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5
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H
60%
All: 6.5%
od
10.1%
10
Pr
Percent
15
Source: BLS
Transportation
Source: BLS
The BLS has also published projections for the 30 occupations that it predicts will decline over the same
period, and these figures provide a similarly grim outlook for working on a factory assembly line. Of those 30
fastest declining occupations, 60% were in the production category. A total of 23% were in management and
office administration, as even some of these higher-skilled jobs get automated away as well.
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© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
Jobs in Key Industries
Three years into the journey to 2024, where does the U.S. labor market stand? This section provides iCIMS’
snapshot of hiring across occupations in four industries: manufacturing, retail trade, healthcare & social
assistance, and professional & business services. For each industry, we review the breadth of occupation
types hired1 and point out a few noteworthy categories. We also show the composition of full-time versus
part-time jobs.
Healthcare Jobs: Concentrated in Direct Services
In healthcare, about 80% of 2016 hires were concentrated primarily among direct providers of care,
although this was spread across four major categories. These included technical healthcare positions
like physicians and nurses, allied healthcare support such as medical and dental assistants or home health
aides, and community and social service occupations such as counselors and social workers. The grab-bag
of “other” occupations was a modest 14% and was highly fragmented at that – only four of these occupation types contributed more than 1% of hires. The category including logistics and accounting business and
financial operations contributed over 1.5%, and the category including software developers and statisticians
(computers and math) contributed about 1.2%.
The healthcare industry had a significant proportion of part-time positions (17%), but more distinctive was
the fact that it had by far the largest proportion of contingent positions (18%), whose hours vary with
demand for services.
Table 1:
Top Other Occupations in Healthcare
Figure 5:
Healthcare Hires Focused on Direct Service
Other
14%
6%
43%
Percent
Food Preparation & Serving
3%
Building & Grounds Maintenance
2%
Business & Financial Operations
2%
Personal Care & Service
2%
Education, Training, & Library
1%
17%
20%
Technical Healthcare
Healthcare Support
Management & Administration
Community & Social Service
Other
1%
Computers & Math
Source: iCIMS
For occupation types, this section focuses on broad groups of “major” categories of jobs under the U.S. government’s Standard Occupational
Classification (SOC) System, but in the next section we dig down to more granular, specific types of “detailed occupations” as well.
1
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© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
Figure 6:
One-Third of Healthcare Hires Were Not Full-Time
3%
17%
18%
1%
62%
Contingent
Full-Time
Intern
Part-Time
Unknown
Source: iCIMS
Retail Trade Jobs: Concentrated in Sales
In retail trade, 62% of 2016 hires were concentrated in just one broad category of occupation types: sales. The
proportion of hires in management or administration was 14% – the lowest among these four industries but
not by a lot. Miscellaneous “other” major categories constituted a fragmented 24%, with only of five of them
comprising more than 1% of hires. Of these, business and financial operations contributed about 1.2%. Retail trade
hired the largest share of part-time positions among the four industries reviewed in this report.
Figure 7:
Retail Trade Occupations Concentrated in Sales
Table 2:
Top Other Occupations in Retail Trade
Other
Percent
Installation, Maintenance, & Repair
5%
Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports & Media
4%
Transportation
4%
Technical Healthcare
3%
Production Workers
3%
Food Preparation & Serving
1%
Business & Financial Operations
1%
24%
14%
62%
Sales & Related Occupations
Management & Administration
Other
Source: iCIMS
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© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
Figure 8:
Retail Trade - Large Proportion of Part-Time Positions
0%
10%
46%
43%
0%
Contingent
Full-Time
Intern
Part-Time
Unknown
Source: iCIMS
Professional & Business Services: Strength in Diversity
Unsurprisingly, the professional & business services industry hired the broadest base of occupations, with
nearly 48% from a miscellaneous group of “other” occupations. Of these, there were three major categories contributing 8% or 9% to the total, and they demonstrate how work in the U.S. is growing in fields that
emphasize creativity or technical skills. Two of those three larger “other” categories emphasize advanced
administrative and technical skills (software and statistics, accounting and logistics, etc.), and the third emphasizes creative and communications skills (media, arts, and design). Nine categories contributed more than
1%. The proportion of hires that were not full-time was only modestly lower than in healthcare, but more
concentrated in part-time work (18%) than contingent work (3%).
Figure 9:
Diversified Hiring in Professional & Business Services
Table 3:
Top Other Occupations in Professional & Business Services
Other
42.3%
47.7%
10.1%
Management & Administration
Sales & Related
Other
Percent
Art, Design, Entertainment, Media, et al.
9%
Computers & Math
9%
Business & Financial Operations
8%
Protective Services
4%
Production Occupations
3%
Architecture & Engineering
3%
Food Preparation & Serving Related
3%
Source: iCIMS
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© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
Figure 10:
More Part-time Positions than Contingent in
Professional & Business Services
3%
9%
18%
2%
Contingent
Full-Time
69%
Intern
Part-Time
Unknown
Source: iCIMS
Manufacturing Jobs: Beyond the Factory Floor
Manufacturing hired a breadth of occupation types more similar to professional & business services than
either healthcare or retail trade. That includes a greater proportion of occupations in general management
and administration and a much greater proportion of miscellaneous “other” occupations. Seven categories
contributed more than 1%, and some of these provided nearly 10% of hires each.
The production occupations most closely aligned with the manufacturing industry’s core mission constituted
only about one-fifth of hires, raising the question of what exactly is a typical manufacturing job? As noted
above, the BLS forecasts that production workers (including factory workers) will actually contract through
2024. In this context, it is worth noting that the largest “other” category was for computers and math – at 6%
of hires, not as high a proportion as in professional & business services, but well above healthcare and retail
trade – reflecting how manufacturing is growing more automated and requiring workers with advanced,
technical education. The manufacturing industry’s proportions of full-time and other jobs was similar to
professional & business services, but the production occupations were much more biased toward full-time work.
Figure 11:
Manufacturing Hired a Lot More Than Factory Workers
Table 4:
Top Other Occupations in Manufacturing
Other
22%
Percent
Computer & Mathematical Occupations
9%
Installation, Maintenance, & Repair Occupations
8%
Architecture & Engineering Occupations
7%
Business & Financial Operations Occupations
6%
Healthcare Support Occupations
5%
43%
16%
20%
Production Occupations
Sales & Related Occupations
Management & Administration
Other
Source: iCIMS
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© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
Figure 13:
Production Occupation Hires
Figure 12:
Manufacturing Hires
4%
13%
1.9%
0.9%
5.5% 5.5%
9%
5%
69%
Contingent
Full-Time
86.2%
Intern
Part-Time
Unknown
Contingent
Full-Time
Intern
Part-Time
Unknown
Source: iCIMS
Source: iCIMS
Supply and Demand for Individual Occupations
Data on positions hired tells us primarily about employers’ demand for different kinds of occupations, but
what about the supply? For the 100 most common occupations in the iCIMS customer base, we looked at
the number of applications per position – what we call the talent supply/demand (TSD) ratio. Some of the
patterns were surprising.
Among iCIMS customers, the white-collar positions received substantially more applicants, on average, than
the blue-collar and so-called pink-collar (service-oriented) positions (see figures 14 and 15). It seems unlikely
that there are more U.S. workers who have white-collar resumes than blue- or pink-collar. There may be
more workers who aspire to white-collar positions, or it may be that iCIMS customers approach white-collar jobs differently. Perhaps they post these jobs more widely (such as to job boards and not just proprietary
career portals), expecting that more of the applicants to these positions would have their own computers
and require more sophisticated marketing strategies to be reached. Then the larger average number of applicants may simply reflect the wider net, the more intensive marketing.
More Applicants Per Position for White Collar Jobs
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© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 15
t
Applicants / Posting
Figure 14
Source: iCIMS
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
There were surprises at the more granular level of detailed occupations, too2. iCIMS found that some healthcare-related occupations received even fewer applicants than did software engineering positions. That
means hiring professionals in the medical field may be even more starved for talent than those looking for
programmers. Extreme cases include nurses and physical therapists – professions that are expected to post
some of the fastest growth over the next decade.
Note though that these figures do not control for the relative quality of the applicants. The wide disparity
between the TSD ratios of these healthcare-related and software-related occupations may be due to the
high standards of formal education and official licensing required by the healthcare industry. Given the
widespread reports of shortages of software developers, it may be that there are more unqualified candidates
applying to these positions, or that software developers are simply more willing to apply to a job than healthcare workers. It stands to reason that programmers would be more mobile – by dint of the independent
personality types associated with that line of work or the sometimes short-lived nature of the start-ups they
often work for.
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Figure 17:
Production Occupations
45
42
40
37
Applicants / Posting
Applicants / Posting
Figure 16:
Some Healthcare Candidates Look
Even Scarcer Than Programmers
29
11
5
33
35
30
25
20
14
15
10
5
0
Web
Developers
Software
Developers,
Applications
Registered
Nurses
Physical
Therapists
Bookkeepers
Source: iCIMS
Accountants &
Auditors
Loan Officers
Source: iCIMS
Figure 16 also shows how quickly the demand for certain skills may be shifting. Web development was a hot
job in the early days of the Internet age, but now its TSD ratio is closer to that of bookkeepers (see figure 17)
than that of software engineers.
Also in figure 15, occupation-specific TSD ratios provide evidence for the conventional wisdom that creativity
and critical-thinking skills are in greater demand than skills for more repetitive tasks. For instance, bookkeepers see much more applicants per position than accountants, auditors, and loan officers. The latter positions
require exercising substantial judgment and critical thinking.
Under the SOC System, occupations are grouped in various levels of aggregation. Where the first section of this report uses the most aggregated
“major” grouping, the second section uses both the major groups and the most granular level of “detailed” occupations.
2
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© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
iCIMS found that managerial positions received some of the largest numbers of applicants per position.
Figure 18 shows that human resource managers and marketing managers received the largest number of
applicants. Healthcare manager positions received at least 65% fewer applicants. Again, the personality types,
workplace cultures, and career trajectories of these different professions may all play a role.
Figure 18:
Supply Versus Demand Varies Widely for Managers
75
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13
© 2017 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Source: iCIMS
U.S. Hiring Trends Report: 2016
About Us
About iCIMS System Data
About iCIMS Chief Economist:
This report presents data from January 2014 through
December 2016 in a panel of more than 1,500
employers drawn from iCIMS’ customer base of
more than 3,200 contracted customers. The data is
generated by user interactions with iCIMS software,
which processes over 2 million jobs a year and over
32 million applications, with broad geographic and
industry representation across the U.S.
Josh Wright is Chief Economist at iCIMS and
oversees the organization’s proprietary
research. Prior to joining iCIMS, Josh served
as a U.S. economist with Bloomberg L.P.,
where he analyzed current macroeconomic trends
and was a frequent guest contributor on Bloomberg
Radio and Bloomberg TV.
A team of iCIMS engineers and data scientists
extracted and cleaned the data, applying a variety of
filters and then aggregating it to protect the privacy
of iCIMS clients and their job candidates. Employers
are assigned to industries under the North American
Industry Classification System (NAICS). Positions were
assigned occupation types under the U.S. government’s Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)
System. Under the SOC System, occupations are
grouped in various levels of aggregation. Where the
first section of this report uses the most aggregated
“major” grouping, the second section uses both the
major groups and the most granular level of “detailed”
occupations.
About iCIMS Hiring Insights
As Chief Economist at iCIMS, Josh is responsible for
analyzing proprietary data in order to produce fresh
insights on emerging trends in the U.S. labor market.
He contributes to the publishing of quarterly trends
reports, as well as semi-annual reports and blog posts
on ad hoc labor topics. In addition, Josh supports in
the development of software that allows clients to
analyze their own performance relative to indus¬try
benchmarks by collaborating with data scientists,
software developers, and marketing executives.
A former Federal Reserve staffer, Josh helped build
the Fed’s mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolio of more than $1 trillion, among other responses
to the global financial crisis. As a researcher, he has
published on labor and housing markets, as well as
U.S. monetary policy, and advised policymakers across
the legislative and executive branches of government.
iCIMS Hiring Insights is a research house that focuses
on labor market insights and recruitment trends. Our
team of researchers and writers use iCIMS’ exclusive
data, proprietary, and secondary research to develop
reports and articles that cover the most recent developments in the workforce. Led by iCIMS’ Chief Economist Josh Wright, iCIMS Hiring Insights helps its
readers stay well-informed on the latest recruitment,
economic, and technology advancements. To learn
more visit: www.icims.com/hiring-insights.
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