Current Employment Trends in the USA

Employment Overview

According to the BLS survey recent report, as of October 8th, 2010, Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-95,000) in September, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.6 percent. Government employment declined (-159,000), reflecting both a drop in the number of temporary jobs for Census 2010 and job losses in local government. Private-sector payroll employment continued to trend up modestly (+64,000). The images below are taken from the BLS report.

Since many of the unemployed are leaving the workforce, the actual number of the unemployed is much higher. Therefore it is more than probable that the unemployment rate was, in fact, increased.

Employment by State

The lowest unemployment rates were found in North and South Dakota and Nebraska. The highest rates were reported in California, Michigan, Nevada and Puerto Rico.

Employment by Industry

The following chart displays employment over-the-month change during the last year by industry. Employment is steadily improves in private service providing industry and especially in business, professional, education and health services. There is also a reasonable basis for assuming that part of the unemployed are recently moved to the service providers sectors as self-employed, small businesses.

I've also made a small research for updated current employment data and found some further interesting details (all images were generated by indeed.com). The data is based on current job postings.

Salaries by Position

Currently CMO and CTO suggested salaries are higher than for CEO and COO positions. It seems that during the deepest recession times CMO and CTO positions were perceived as the more required and essential ones.

Salaries by Location

New York is one of the best paid States to work at – about 18% higher than average CEO salaries for job postings nationwide.

Big Company is better. Is it?

Surprisingly Early Stage companies suggest much higher salaries, 71% and 63% higher than the Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 salaries, correspondingly. Although early stage companies are considered as less "safe" workplaces, higher salaries serve as "risk" compensations.

See further trends here.

Coopetition 1: Would you cooperate with your competitor?

Summary

A few months ago, on a cup of coffee under a humid weather, my friend and I had a discussion about collaborating with competitors. We both agreed that when competition is indirect and there is an added value, such collaboration is the right strategic step. However, we could not have agreed on collaboration with direct competitors. So, I've decided to share this issue with you, the readers, to help in resolving this disagreement.

This post is the first in a series of posts on this subject, and I really hope that it will be interactive with your help. Would you coope(ti)rate with me?

What's Coopetition? - The Roots

The concept seems to have been taken up most extensively in the computer industry, where strategic alliances are common in order to develop new products and markets, particularly between software and hardware firms.

Ray Noorda, the founder of Novell, is regarded as a pioneer of coopetition, both the term and the concept. Noorda was the first to articulate that the many interoperating parts of the computer industry meant that one company needed to cooperate with another to ensure their products worked together.

Imagine the web, computers, hardware, and software, and eventually the social media and user- interfaces, without cooperation between the competing companies in this industry. A total mess and absolutely useless.

As a general rule, cooperation can be beneficial to participating parties when competition is indirect and the parties can provide each other complimentary products (technology, service, etc) with added value. Well, in coopetition the rules of the game are changed: it is a situation of possible cooperation between two or more direct competitors.

Competitive advantage - Such collaborations may not provide the coopetitiors with competitive advantage over each other. However, competitive advantage can be achieved by the organizations outside the alliance.

Why to Coopete (cooperate with competitor)

The only reason is leveraging value for the coopetitors. The value can be long term or short term, it can be quantitative and qualitative, but in the bottom line the coopetitors benefit from such alliance more than if they wouldn’t.

Networked world and economy

We live in a flat world. Networking is the most common and accepted business tool available today, and it is spreading everywhere. Business dynamics have changed. Social media brought these networking tools to our personal lives and the personal “real world”. Try not to coopetite in these circumstances

TO BE CONTINUED...

Photo source: http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-10-23/news/17318303_1_half-marathon-leukemia-lymphoma-society-ocean-beach