Still Hope For Unemployed Workers

Sixty percent of workers who were laid off in the past year have found new positions, 88 percent of them full time, according to a CareerBuilder press release citing a Harris Interactive survey of 800 laid-off workers. But 56 percent of those who haven’t yet found new jobs are fearful of getting back to the work force. Fifty percent were nervous about having to prove themselves, 40 percent were fearful of the unknown and 21 percent were unfamiliar with new technologies, the survey found.

More than half of workers who’ve found jobs report that their new positions are in a completely different industry than their previous jobs. For instance, the survey identified a bookkeeper who became a truck driver, a restaurant manager who entered the IT field, and a former financial advisor who became an elementary school teacher.

“We have a growing skills gap and the need to get millions of Americans back to work,” said CareerBuilder North America President Brent Rasmussen. “As the economy recovers, we need to focus on retraining and ‘re-skilling’ workers to help them move to new fields with a greater number of opportunities.”

Laid-off workers also are seeing slight improvements in pay rates upon finding new jobs, the survey found. Forty-five percent reported having to take a pay cut in the new position, which is down 2 percent from last year.