With 9 months of the year officially behind us, I thought it would be timely to provide a review of YTD split placements among our membership. This morning, the September jobs report showed a modest decline in jobs growth from August, but the US unemployment rate shrank to 3.5%, a 50-year low. Within NPAworldwide, many members are still experiencing near-record hiring activity, although there are certainly pockets that are less robust. Overall split placement revenue is up in our network 20% compared to this time last year. This is a combination of both more placements as well as higher salaries. Some of the things we are noticing:
- The largest areas of placement activity are engineering/operations/manufacturing, closely followed by our cross-industry sector (HR, sales, marketing, business development and other areas that are not industry-specific). Technology is next, in spite of some reported layoffs in Big Tech. Some of the common job titles we are seeing include:
- Manufacturing Engineer
- VP of Engineer
- Logistics professionals
- Supply chain professionals
- Sales executives
- International Marketing executives
- Account Managers
- HR Managers
- Salaries are increasing quickly. In fact salaries above US $100K annually are our top sector, and are more than double the next highest sector this year, which is US 90K – $100K annually. This is also a year-over-year increase. The higher salaries are not necessarily correlating to higher-level roles, either. In past years, salaries over $100K would have been almost exclusively C-level or other very senior roles; now we are see them for a much wider range of positions.
- The number of split placements has increased about 10% compared to last year.
Split placements are effective in multiple market conditions. When the market is hot, split placement partners can help you find candidates more quickly. When your occupational niche or geographic market slows down, working with partners can create new business opportunities and help balance cash flow fluctuations. Demographic realities suggest that candidate-short market conditions are likely to persist for a number of years even if there is an economic slowdown. If you haven’t considered splits, now is a perfect time to evaluate how that can fit into your business mix.