A major point of contention as the global economy recovers and then falters is that the recovery appears to be a jobless one. Like many generalizations, it pays to scratch the surface and look at some of the data to get a better look at where there has been job growth and where employment is flat or down.
To do that, we took a look at a few industry groups and employment in major regions of The Global 5000 companies to understand what has happened over the years before the recession (2007) until economies recovered in 2010. In each industry and each region we chose the “2nd 10” largest companies … that is we skipped the 10 largest in each industry and region. Then for each we computed a CAGR over the period. Therefore, it is not a total market look, rather a look at some key indicators and markets.
For the industries, we find the follow growth rates in total employees for these 10 large companies between 2007 and 2010:
- Banking = neg 1.8% and it appears that more jobs in banking will be shed in 2011
- Food & Beverage = neg 0.5% but with food prices currently rising we expect to see an increase when 2011 ends
- Technology showed the best with a growth rate of 8.9%
- Telecom also reported a strong showing with am 8.6% growth rate
- Building & Construction, not surprisingly, fell by 1.6% over these years.
- The chemical industry grew by 2.4%
- The Retailer/Wholesaler segment showed total employee growth of 3.9%
- Aerospace & Defense had a negative 1.9% employment change and will likely face a bumpy road over the next couple of years.
Using the same selection process for companies in major regions, it is easy to spot those markets that are mature and the growth areas. These are global employees of corporations headquartered in the region … not necessarily all the employees in the rgion.
- AsiaPac growth was 7.2% from 2007 to 2010
- Europe reported CAGR of 0.9% in the period
- North America employees grew by 1.8%
- And the big increase was in South America where these 2nd 10 companies showed 12.2% growth rate.
These differing growth rates reflect the general direction of the economies today. Maturing markets in Europe and North America, growing AsiaPac and a fast growing South America. The bottom line is that some markets are no growth, but some regions and some industry groups will move ahead while others struggle. As your planning for sales and marketing targets evolve, adopting an understanding of the segments & geographies will put your resources in the right places to take advantage of growth markets.
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