If you’re job searching or soon planning to, it will likely take you longer to land a new job than it would have earlier this year.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., the oldest outplacement consulting firm in the U.S., recently conducted a survey of 3,000 job seekers to discover how long it took them to land new jobs.
The survey results indicated that it took job seekers a median average of 4.4 months to land new jobs in the third quarter of 2008, which was an increase from 3.6 months in the previous quarter.
A recent, related survey indicated that even temporary holiday jobs will take longer to land, because there will be more competition for fewer jobs.
The survey results also indicated that 13.4 percent of the job seekers relocated to land their new jobs in the second quarter of 2008. Although that was an increase from 8.9 percent in the first quarter, it wasn’t as high as it was in 2006 through much of 2007.
However, relocation was likely lower than in the previous years, at least partly because of the housing market collapse. Job seekers who are willing to relocate are probably having difficulty selling their homes, the same as most other home sellers these days.
Worse, job seekers who bought during the sellers’ market ending in 2005 might have to sell their homes at a loss in this buyers’ market, in order to relocate for new jobs.
As a result, it’s likely that fewer job seekers will be relocating this year than before, which makes it even harder for them to land new jobs than the current economic climate dictates.
Thanks to the worsening economy, the unemployment rate was 6.1 percent in September 2008, the highest in five years.
