For many people the U.S economy is recovering, while for others we are stagnant. BP and Yahoo have announced a 5% and 10% workforce cuts respectively, while others assured us the U.S workforce added close to 300,000 thousand jobs in December. It is no surprise then that Americans are ambivalent as to the state of the economy, but hope that the new year bring our small business a better one than last year.
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Workers in high demand in Ohio, Springfield
applicants in Ohio is as robust as it has been in the past five years, particularly in the trucking and nursing industries.
Ohio saw more online advertised job openings in one month — from Oct. 14 to Nov. 13 — than at any time since the state began tracking online job postings five years ago, according to a recent report from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
Statewide, Ohio had 240,000 posted openings between those dates. In Springfield alone, more than 1,420 jobs openings were listed Monday on OhioMeansJobs.com, an online state-run help wanted page.
Locally, the areas where workers are most needed closely follow statewide trends. In the 12-county West Ohio area that includes Clark, Greene, Miami and Montgomery counties, heavy and tractor-trailer truck driving was the occupation with the most job ads, 1,912, according to the state’s monthly report.
The Key to Success, Revealed: Leveraging Business Intelligence Tools in 2016
Even with the proliferation of innovation in recent years, there are still business owners using Excel spreadsheets, pencil and paper, and manual logs to track business developments and record data.
These business owners are so comfortable with their old ways of doing things that they’re afraid of making changes.
Sound familiar? If you’ve put off adopting business intelligence (BI) tools up until now, it’s time that you finally reconsider.
The Value of BI Solutions
There’s no clear or consistent definition for business intelligence, but some definitions are better than others.
According to datapine, a provider of one of the leading self-service BI tools, “Business intelligence tools are designed to help business people draw insights from past performance, predict future events and avoid obstacles even before they have taken place.” In other words, BI is about using past performance and data to predict future outcomes and conclusions.
BI is viewed pretty highly in corporate circles. This means you aren’t going to meet many business owners who are firmly against these tools. Nobody will stand outside your building picketing and protesting the implementation of a BI solution. The issue is that some business owners don’t fully understand the value of these solutions.
Workforce also grows across U.S; wages flatten
WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy entered 2016 with strong momentum as employers added 292,000 jobs in December, pushing the annual number last year to 2.7 million.
The full-year number was slightly below the 3.1 million jobs added in 2014 but, taken together, they are the top two years for job growth since 1999.
Unemployment held steady in December at 5 percent and workforce participation rate rose slightly last month, to 62.6 percent from 62.5 percent, the Labor Department said Friday. The rate remains near a 40-year low.
Wage growth was mostly flat last month following some improvement over the second half of 2015. Looked over a 12-month range, worker pay grew slightly faster than the rate of inflation, in effect stretching workers’ earnings a bit further.
