For many hard-to-fill jobs, gov’t reports few takers

There are at least 57 kinds of jobs that only a handful of applicants, or at least those who bother to apply, can fill.

The Bureau of Employment and Labor Statistics (BLES) conducted a survey of establishments with at least 20 workers and learned that there were numerous “hard-to-fill” vacancies throughout the country.

In a report on job vacancies in the industry and service sectors, the bureau said that there were “numerically small” occupations “considered to be vital to a firm’s success.”

But few applicants are going for such jobs, the BLES reported. These include geologists and geophysicists, aircraft pilots, physiotherapists and industrial robot operators.

Such jobs are spread across classes of occupations, such as corporate executives, managers, and supervisors; professionals; technicians and assistant professionals; service and sales workers; craft and related trades workers; and plant and machine operators and assemblers.

The survey, which covered January 2009 to June 2010, involved some 24,000 companies, of which two out of five were hiring additional workers.

“This figure (40 percent) is quite significant considering that the survey period coincided with the global financial crisis,” BLES said.

“This suggests that certain sectors in the economy—real estate, business process outsourcing and tourism—remained resilient from the global market volatility, expanding in 2009/2010 and, in the process, creating jobs,” it added.

Of the top hard-to-fill vacancies listed, the least number of job vacancies was seen for industrial robot operators, with only three applying for every 10 slots.

For every 10 vacancies, only four were interested in becoming sewing machine operators and bus drivers.

Similarly, only seven jobseekers wanted to be bakers, pastry cooks and confectionary makers. Only eight wanted to be plumbers and pipe fitters and only nine wanted to be ship and aircraft controllers.

Among professionals, only eight physiotherapists and only 10 statisticians were available.

Other much-needed hands were teachers for the handicapped and the disabled, social work professionals and even journalists and writers. These jobs had between 10 and 20 applicants for every 10 vacancies.

The flip-side of all this is that there are a host of other hard-to-fill vacancies for which there is a large number of applicants but few are qualified for the jobs. These include civil engineering technicians, research and development managers, electronics and communications engineers and social work associate professionals.