By Beth Fitzgerald
Originally Posted on NJBIZ.com - January 12, 2011
The job market for CEOs has stabilized, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global executive recruiting firm, which said 1,234 CEO departures were announced in 2010 — only seven more than the number who lost their jobs in 2009.
Thomas J. Fuller, general managing partner of the executive search firm Epsen Fuller/IMD, of Morristown, said he is not surprised CEO changes have been stable over the past two years, as many companies focused on weathering the recession.
“But that will change in New Jersey and throughout the country,” he said. “A lot of companies are looking at strategies and undertaking initiatives now to get back into a growth mode.” This week, Fuller is at the J.P. Morgan life science conference in San Francisco, “and it is the busiest and most active and most upbeat conference they have had; it is absolutely buzzing. There is a lot of optimism.”
Fuller said in his executive recruitment work, “we see a marked pickup in activity; boards and CEOs are undertaking initiatives to really grow their business again. Management structures are changing and bringing in new talent, and they are looking at new ways of doing things.”
This stability at the top is radiating downward through the workplace, according to Koleen Singerline, senior vice president of Snelling Staffing Services/The Wyckoff Group, in Eatontown. “Hardly ever am I hearing about layoffs,” she said.
Layoffs have subsided because “the companies have cut all they can,” she said. “Now, when they go to hire, instead of one person doing administration and someone else doing billing, they are combining those two positions, and one person does a broader range of tasks. They want people who can multitask.”
According to the Challenger report, CEO turnover in 2010 was heaviest in the health care sector, where 201 changes occurred. The government and nonprofit sector saw the second-largest number of CEO departures last year, with 159. The financial industry saw 124 CEOs announce their departures in 2010.
The report said the circumstances behind most CEO changes were vague in 2010, with 388 citing resignation as the reason for departure. Another 306 retired from their posts, while 204 stepped down as CEO, but remained with the company, usually as a member of the board. Another 124 found new positions with other companies. In 26 instances, the CEO was removed or fired.
Right now, though, some New Jersey businesses don’t seem to be acting very confident. The Edison-New Brunswick and Newark-Union metropolitan divisions lost 19,400 and 4,400 jobs, respectively, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. In contrast, employment in the Nassau-Suffolk metropolitan division increased by 6,000 from the previous November. In the New York-White Plains-Wayne Division, the job count increased by 9,100.