2009 Employment Outlook: Gut Check for Job Seekers from Monster Career Advice

2009 Employment Outlook: Gut Check for Job Seekers from Monster Career Advice: "Indiana University economist Bill Witte sees a similarly grim picture. “An unemployment peak of around 8 percent is likely,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number over 9 percent.”

Against this backdrop, one statistic might seem like good news: There were 3.05 million job openings in October 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that’s down nearly 1 million openings from the 4.04 million reported a year earlier. And many of the jobs counted as open won’t be filled in the foreseeable future.

Some staffing firms are keeping a stiff upper lip. Manpower’s Employment Outlook survey says that employers in eight of 13 industry sectors plan to increase staffing levels in the first quarter of 2009, whereas 67 percent plan to hold the line."