This post is excerpted from the Executive Summary of the “Virginia Job Vacancy Survey” prepared for the Virginia Employment Commission by the Center for Urban and Regional Analysis at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Key Findings — Statewide
Employers project a 4.2% overall job vacancy rate in 2016, 61% due to separations and 39% due to new positions. Extrapolated to the entire QCEW establishment population from which the survey sample was drawn, the number of projected job vacancies in 2016 is estimated to be 130,827.
Over 60% of the positions, an estimated 78,785 jobs, will be full-time, while 32% (41,803 jobs) will be part-time (8% are unknown). Eighty-three percent (108,405) of the positions will be permanent and 16% (21,209) will be seasonal.
Employers expect it to be extremely difficult to fill over 21% of the vacancies and moderately difficult to fill an additional 39% of the vacancies. This perception permeates all industry sectors, employer sizes and regions, for the most part. However, employers were not asked to state why they have these expectations. Thinking that perhaps perceived difficulty in filling vacancies would be correlated with formal education or training requirements, we cross-tabulated these variables. However, we found no strong correlation between perceived difficult in filling positions and formal education, training or skills required.
Asked to rate the attributes they seek in new hires, employers ranked them in the following order: Professionalism, Communication Skills, Basic Academic Skills, Interpersonal Skills, Critical Thinking Skills, and Technology Use.
Extensive formal education does not appear to be required for the majority of job openings. Almost two-thirds of all openings (63%) require a high school diploma or GED, whereas about 12% require an associate degree or some college with no degree, and 18% require a bachelor’s degree or higher. About one-third of the projected vacancies requires licensing or other industry-recognized credential.
About half (46%) of all projected openings require on-the-job training of one month or less and about 31% require training of 12 months or less. Over 42% of the projected openings require no prior experience and almost 53% require less than five years’ experience.
For full-time positions, employers project, on average, an annual starting salary of $39,385. For part-time positions, employers expect to pay an average hourly starting wage of $11.98.
