The labor market is even more complicated than you thought

Having a hard time wrapping your head around the labor market? Same.

New research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) released Monday reveals a complicated hiring picture for HR and talent acquisition (TA) pros. In the new report, Help Wanted: Understanding the US Labor Shortage, economists and researchers at SHRM outline an ongoing dynamic besetting job seekers and recruiters alike.

“We have more unemployed people than job openings, and while that is a helpful measure for us to understand and aggregate what is happening, it makes a key assumption, and that’s that any unemployed person can fill a particular job opening that is out there,” said James Atkinson, SHRM’s VP of thought leadership on a press call. “But of course, we all know that that’s not necessarily the case.”

The new report found an occupational mismatch between the open positions businesses need filled and the supply of unemployed people with the necessary experience. An occupational mismatch can hinder an employer from filling a role, and a job seeker from securing employment, as fewer and fewer job openings align with their job history.

SHRM set out to understand the impacts of an occupational mismatch between job seekers and openings.

“Organizations are struggling to fill positions because there’s not that supply of unemployed people with the necessary occupational experience,” Atkinson said. “On the flip side, we still hear those stories [that] unemployed people are struggling to find jobs that are based on the occupational experience that they have.”

The research noted that the unfillable job share—the percentage of roles that cannot be filled by an unemployed person whose last role was in the same occupation group—was at 32.7%.

“If we simply say, in order to fill a job, you have to have that particular occupational experience, we see that one in three job openings actually can’t be filled,” he said, adding that the problem is mirrored on the job seekers side: one in four job seekers can’t find a role in the same occupational group as their most recent employment.

What’s HR to do? Atkinson pointed to healthcare as an example of an industry where employers are navigating occupational mismatch. Some hospital systems are recruiting from local high schools or community colleges, he said, and directing prospective applicants to the training and certifications needed to qualify for the jobs that need filling.

“That is one of those recruitment strategies that is really high touch, because they’re actually trying to engage the talent pool before it’s an actual talent pool,” Atkinson told HR Brew.

Atkinson noted that most hospital roles require being present in an actual hospital, so recruitment strategies often involve reaching out to local educational institutions or community organizations focused on training and developing the types of talent needed right now.

He also pointed to new L&D and skills technology that recruiters can use to map “skills adjacencies” and source talent (externally, but also internally) that may have skills similarly aligned with the needs of the role.

“Sometimes our job descriptions are organizations’ worst enemies in terms of filtering out qualified talent,” he said. “Organizations have a broader remit for the types of things that they are looking for in a particular role. That means that more people can apply and also expanding it out to more people with skills adjacencies can apply as well.”