Employment up
Region still lacks skills employers need
Hiring was up 15.2 percent in Miami-Fort Lauderdale in January over a year ago, report finds.
Beef up that resume or, in this case, your LinkedIn profile.
Hiring was up 15.2 percent in Miami-Fort Lauderdale in January over a year ago, according to a February work force report by LinkedIn, the professional online network used by job-seekers and recruiters.
The region outpaces hiring nationally, which rose by 13 percent in January over the year, the monthly LinkedIn report said.
Industries with the most hiring year over year were manufacturing and industrial; aerospace; automotive; transportation; and financial services and insurance. All increased by double-digits.
LinkedIn said it was too early to tell whether the new tax law resulted in increased hiring. However, Dan Roth, LinkedIn editorin-chief, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program on Thursday that accounting jobs were swelling as a result of the changed tax code.
The LinkedIn report looks at employment trends nationally and in 20 of the largest U.S. metro areas. LinkedIn’s hiring rate is measured by the percentage of its members that changed the name of their employer on their profile the same month they began a new job, divided by the total number of LinkedIn members (more than 146 million).
A separate report, released Feb. 1 by Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago, said Florida employers’ announced job cuts were down by 21 percent in January over a year ago.
The Miami-Fort Lauderdale region, however, continues to have a skills gap, or mismatch between the skills employers need and the skills workers have. The skills gap is driven by an abundance of workers with certain skills, including marketing and event management, multilingual, TV and video production, travel, litigation, accounting, strategy, architectural design, sales, and crime prevention.
Scarce skills in the region include, in order of demand: lean manufacturing and quality management; software engineering; Java development; materials engineering; database management; Perl, Python and Ruby software skills; software and user testing; process and project management; ecology and environmental services; IT infrastructure and system management.
The report also said that Miami-Fort Lauderdale added the most workers over the last year from Venezuela, New York City
and Colombia. For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Miami-Fort Lauderdale, 9.65 workers moved to the area in the last year from Venezuela. Workers have been leaving the country due to political and economic turmoil.
More workers also are moving from Miami to West Palm Beach, Orlando and Atlanta, according to LinkedIn. For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Miami-Fort Lauderdale, 5.59 workers moved to West Palm Beach in the past year.
More than 20,000 companies
LinkedIn said it was too early to tell whether the new tax resulted in increased hiring.
reportedly use LinkedIn to recruit workers, and more than 3 million jobs are posted on the site each month. LinkedIn was acquired in 2016 for $26 billion by Microsoft.