IT Hiring to Lead the Pack in Q4: Report

About a fifth of companies are planning to hire in the last quarter of the year, but worker sentiment is all over the map, and it’s not all that rosy. Just over 21 percent of companies are planning to hire either full-time or temporary workers in the fourth quarter—which is consistent with 2009 hiring expectations for the same quarter—according to a recent U.S.-based survey of 2,400 hiring managers and 3,100 workers performed on behalf of USA Today and CareerBuilder.

The big number from this study? Sixty-five percent of all companies are not planning to add any additional headcount in the last three months of the year, although 27 percent plan to hire temporary workers.

Incidentally, however, the industry with the highest percentage of plans to hire full-time or temporary employees in the fourth quarter is IT at 27 percent, followed by administrative (25%), engineering (12%), finance (12%), sales (10%) and creative design (9%) industries.

"The return to prerecession employment levels will take some time,” said CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson in an October 7 statement. “Although the recession officially ended a year ago, we still have an economy burdened by debt. Employers are watchful and gradually augmenting their staffs with permanent and temporary hiring."

Workers don’t necessarily perceive the positive effects of this augmentation, as this study and a similar one from Glassdoor.com released October 7 show.

In the CareerBuilder survey, 29 percent of workers feel underemployed, with 71 percent of those people reporting that their skills and experience are being underused. Nearly half said they do not feel challenged at work, and another 30 percent said they do not feel that they have autonomy in their job. About one in five workers took a job that was lower than his or her previous position.

There are, however, some full time workers who report that they are happy with their jobs. About half of employees said they were happier now at work than they were a year ago, while the other half said they were not.

"Until employees and unemployed job seekers see steady positive changes related to the job market and their bank accounts, it's unlikely we'll see stability in employment confidence, which is a significant indicator of consumer confidence,” Rusty Rueff, Glassdoor.com's resident career expert, who headed human resources for PepsiCo. and Electronic Arts, said in a statement.

A Glassdoor survey of 2,400 workers found 56 percent of employees reporting there were pay cuts in the third quarter at their company.