Open for Business: Consistent figures for 2018 US Shared Services jobs market

In June 2017 headlines revealed over 6 million job openings were available in the U.S., a staggering number in light of the 6.8m Americans seeking work at that time. One year on, as we enter Q3 2018, the U.S unemployment rate continues its downward trend, now reaching a decade-long low of 3.9%. 

But how do nation-wide employment figures translate into the buoyancy of the Business Services Industry? What do we know about the availability of roles inside captive and outsourced delivery organisations for the US market and how (if at all) has that picture altered in the past 12 months? And which sectors (and companies) are leading the charge? SSON Analytics H1 2018 US Job Market report analyses all online US job advert data posted in the last 6 months to help give an accurate view of who’s actively hiring and where. Here’s a snapshot of this week’s roles and a 50,000 ft view of the US recruitment market YTD. 

Here’s 3 short insights from the numbers so far:

1. The US Shared Services Market is very much still hiring, and at the same rate as 2017 – In line with the Governments reporting on positive employment figure increase, the Shared Services sector is showing no sign of decline. It’s too early to draw a full YOY comparison with 2017, but so far this year (Jan-July 2018) a total of 23,732 Shared Service job adverts have posted online in the US. Compare that to the 45,284 US Shared Services jobs posted online throughout last year (total number for the whole of 2017) and a pattern of consistency is starting to form. At worse it would appear the hiring rate remain consistent in 2018. A strong third and 4th quarter for Shared Services recruitment could well result in an overall increase YOY. 
   
   
2. Nowhere offers more Shared Services opportunity than New York – Despite housing considerably less Shared Services Centres (SSC) (on a state-level) than the 3 biggest SSC hubs of CA, TX and FLA, at a city level, there are still more Shared Service and GBS job openings in the Big Apple than anywhere else. So far in 2018, a total 1042 NYC roles citing keywords “shared services” or “shared service centre” in the description were posted online. Interestingly, filter these NYC posts by function and a slightly different story starts to emerge across the year. Somewhat expectedly, NY ranks highest for Finance & Accounting and IT SS roles, but it sits second to Phoenix, AZ for HR openings. 
   
   
3. Shared Services Recruitment remains strong for Healthcare & Finance – Top US recruiters for the first half of this year reveals a continued presence for the Heath Sector with Wellstar Shared Services (3rd) and Peace Health (4th) both featuring in the top 10 companies posting US roles. Finance also remains amongst the strongest sectors. Number one recruitment spot YTD goes to Wells Fargo with 628 shared services jobs posted this year alone, and Citi also features in the top ten with 233 roles advertised. 

If you’re interested to view any of the jobs data that feeds into this report, a week-by-week update of real-time Shared Services jobs data features in this US report.  For a global view of the current shared services recruitment, SSON Analytics City Cube houses real-time jobs data figure for openings across 3800+ cities worldwide.