Wow. In the past week, there has been a flurry of blogging activity between the Purchasing Certification Blog, Sourcing Innovation, Supply Excellence, and Spend Matters on the topic of the BLS report about the growth rate of purchasing jobs.
Other than yours truly, all of the editors of the aforementioned blogs felt that the BLS' estimate of purchasing job growth likely being up to 8% was incredibly wrong. Sourcing Innovation even featured a quite passionate post disagreeing with some of the points I've made here.
So, my questions to my fellow bloggers are: if the estimated growth is not 8%, what is it? Why? And is the likelihood of another economic recession factored into that estimate?
I've read a lot about 8% being the wrong number, but no offering of what the right number is.
And, oh yeah, not only are software and procurement outsourcing factors limiting job growth, but so are the trend of center-led procurement and the heating up of merger and acquisition activity. There's been lots of buzz about huge companies (Alcoa, for example) perhaps being gobbled up and, when that happens, the purchasing department of the combined company usually has less staff than the sum of the two independent companies.
To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
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3 comments:
Charles, It's not the "up to 8%" that I'm in passionate disagreement in ... it's the "down to 0%". Unless the US is in for a major recession, there's just no logical basis for that assumption given ( a ) the declining workforce that is resulting from an aging global population, ( b ) the trend for production, and business, to continue to expand and ( c ) the recent trend for organizations to (finally) pay more attention to the purchasing function. If it's 8%, that's fine. In fact, that's respectable growth and I would have no problem with that. It's the "0 to 8%" that I have a problem with, because all the trends point to growth and 0% is not growth.
Charles,
One possible point of confusion is that there are two ways to measure percentage growth.
( a ) Percentage increase of Total Number of Jobs at time T2 relative to the Total Number of Jobs at time T1
( b ) Percentage increase of Total Number of Jobs Available to Be Filled at time T2 relative to the Total Number of Jobs Available to Be Filled at time T1
It could be that you're thinking of ( a ) with respect to growth metrics and some bloggers are thinking of ( b ). With respect to ( a ), as per my previous comment, I could accept an 8% growth no problem (but not 0%!). (I could even be convinced that it might even be a little lower due to consolidations that result from M&A, reduction of tactical jobs due to technology, and outsourcing.)
However, with respect to ( b ), given the points I made in my last comment, I would expect it to be in the low teens percentage wise, given the points I've made in my previous comments and posts. If an in-depth study by a respectable authority proves it to be lower, that's fine, but I'm not going to accept a study on three (+) year old data from the BLS, that appears to be quite flawed, without question when compared against all of the recent surveys and trends.
Yes, I (and I believe the BLS) is measuring job growth as (a) Percentage increase of Total Number of Jobs at time T2 relative to the Total Number of Jobs at time T1.
An interesting point about the impending baby boomer retirement. My feeling is that the mass retirements will result in a more lean workforce.
Many companies will not be able to fill the positions with qualified candidates as quickly as they are vacated due to retirements. And, at least based on my experience, when positions go unfilled for a long time, top execs start thinking "Hmmm...we've had these positions open for 9 months and we've survived as a company, maybe we don't need to fill them." So I think some number of positions vacated by baby boomer retirements will go unfilled.
And when you think about all of the companies who offer incentives for early retirement as a means of shedding "dead wood," I can see how mass retirements will serve to reduce the number of tactical purchasing positions.
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