Career Position Announcements

By: Margot Weinstein, Chair of ARES Job Placement Committee

MW Leadership Consultants LLC, drmargot@drmargotweinstein.com and

Jesse Saginor, Vice Chair of ARES Job Placement Committee

Texas A&M University, jsaginor@tamu.edu

Now that the election is over and the political uncertainty somewhat resolved, are we finally moving towards significant signs of recovery?  Despite no solid solution for resolving the fiscal cliff, economic conditions are likely to improve, albeit slow and steady, in the coming year based on multiple sources.  In 2013, the economy will continue to improve, but at a tortoise’s pace.  Jobs in real estate-related industries exist, but it will take longer to land them.

In a recent Chicago Association of Realtors 2013 Forecasting Conference, Dr. Michael Miller from DePaul University shed some light on the numbers underlying the tortoise pace of economic recovery.  Increases in real gross domestic product have hovered around quarterly increases averaging 2.75 percent since the first quarter of 2011.  While there is growth, the payroll growth has not been steady, demonstrating that the rate of economic growth does not necessarily reflect solid payroll growth.  The lack of payroll growth means that the unemployment rate has held steady despite slight increases in payroll growth.  Underlying slow payroll growth is stagnant income growth.  All of these signs signal a slowly recovering economy, but this recovery is still far from matching the job levels at the high of the economic boom before the recent recession.

From an inflation and interest rate perspective, rates are not expected to change in the near future.  One interesting note is that the Federal Reserve indicated that there would not be any increases in interest rates until unemployment levels fall to 6.5%.  Using the job creation rates since the end of the recession, Dr. Miller estimates that it would take 40 months of job growth to reach that 6.5% unemployment figure. Using a goal of getting the nation back to an unemployment rate of 5.0% by the next presidential election would require 240,000 new jobs per month.  To create 240,000 new jobs per month would require the job creation rate to be 60% higher than it presently is.

A recent interview with Dr. Miller shed light about the job trends and the relationship with the teaching profession.  Dr. Miller says “based on the economic concept of ‘derived demand’, where the demand for professors in a field is derived from the demand for that skill set in the job marketplace.  For instance, the recent downward trend in law school enrollments was due to the oversaturated market for lawyers. As the real estate market improves and job growth in the industry returns, the demand for real estate-related degrees will increase, with a corresponding increase in demand for new faculty members in real estate programs.  A strong real estate job market will eventually lead to an increase in the demand for real estate education.”

Despite the slow overall growth projected in the coming year, there is a silver lining, albeit small, from the revisions to employment estimates from the second half of 2012.  The U.S. Department of Labor’s Current Employment Situation Report released on February 1, 2013 had enough recent positive job growth to push the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 14,000 for the first time since 2007.  The Department of Labor revised the employment figures by approximately 30,000 additional jobs, from a previous average of 150,000 jobs to a revised average of 180,000 jobs on a monthly basis for 2012.  Employment figures for November 2012 were revised from 161,000 to 247,000 and from 155,000 to 196,000 for December 2012. 

More important than the general numbers is the growth in specific sectors and the signals for the real estate industry.  Figure 1 highlights the recent Employment Research Brief issued by Marcus & Millichap Research Services.  The revised job estimates show an increase of 73,000 construction jobs based on an increase in momentum in the single-family and multi-family housing markets.  While the largest job increases are in the professional and business services sector, these job increases have not been significant enough to require new supply, but instead resulting in a slightly lower vacancy rate.  Education and health services, the third largest sector in terms of employment recovery, is largely due to increases in health-related jobs, and not education based on many university budgets getting cut as states cut back on funding.  Overall, since the recession ended, the growth over the past few years has resulted in recovering 65 percent of the jobs lost during the recession.

What do all these numbers mean for job seekers?  It means that there is growth, but slow growth as opportunities arise in the economy.  Finding the best jobs will require more time, but as even the hare knows, there is no instant gratification and the job search will take longer to finish first.  With that end in mind, more time must be invested in the job search with a view on the race, not the finish line.  Ideally, the goal is to land a job, but that search has to be ongoing.  It requires networking to determine where opportunities exist.  It requires multiple resumes tailored specifically to multiple jobs.  It requires setting yourself apart from all of your competition, because it will continue to be an employer’s market for the near future. 

As the market continues to recover, the goal of the ARES Career Center is to provide insight and information to help job seekers better position themselves to find jobs.  The Career Center provides links to multiple real estate job websites that provide additional insight into the job market.  While the annual academic job cycle winds down, now is the time to start positioning yourself for academic jobs that may exist next year.  The best way to do this is to network at the ARES conference in Hawaii with people employed in various capacities throughout the real estate industry and academic field.

Please feel free to contact either of us, Margot Weinstein (drmargot@drmargotweinstein.com) or Jesse Saginor (jsaginor@tamu.edu), if you need further job information or if we can help you with your professional goals. 

Figure 1