Hundreds of US-based direct marketers, agencies and service providers are offering glimmers of hope for direct marketing jobseekers, according to the latest Bernhart Associates employment update.

“It appears the direct marketing job market is scraping the bottom,”  reports Jerry Bernhart, principal of Bernhart Associates Executive Search, a direct marketing recruiting firm which has been issuing quarterly direct marketing employment reports Stateside since 2001. 

“This is the first quarter in two years in which the hiring index is showing improvement and planned layoffs are continuing their trend lower,”  said Bernhart (pictured below).  

According to the survey, 20 per cent of the respondents said they will be adding to staff during the current summer quarter, up from 16 per cent in the spring. Layoffs declined for the third quarter in a row, with eight per cent planning to reduce staff compared with 13 per cent last quarter and 20 per cent at the start of 2009.   The number of companies reporting hiring freezes held steady at 30 per cent. The hiring freeze figure was higher for agencies, with 44 per cent reporting that they’re holding the line on hiring.

Bernhart said responses to the hiring freeze question underscores the prevailing mood of uncertainty: “We always ask when they plan to lift their hiring freezes and the vast majority said they expected those freezes to remain in place through the rest of 2009.”

Bernhart noted that business-to-business (B2B) direct marketers are faring better overall in the key employment indicators compared with their business-to-consumer (B2C) counterparts. For example, when asked if they plan to reduce staff, 13 per cent of B2C direct marketers said they expect further layoffs this summer compared with nine per cent among B2B respondents.

Despite the uptick in the survey’s overall results, Bernhart foresees no significant comeback in direct marketing hiring until at least 2010: “You can’t stage a recovery with only one-in-five direct marketers planning to hire and one-third of the others holding on to hiring freezes with no plans to lift them until at least the end of the year,” he said. “In my conversations with senior level executives, there is no consistent level of optimism in the current economic environment for them to jump into the employment market.  

“I’m also seeing that same caution in executive search. Companies are telling us they’re thinking about making staffing changes, but they are slow to pull the trigger.”

Despite the abundance of jobseekers, the survey also shows that filling open direct marketing positions is not always an easy task. When asked if they were experiencing difficulty hiring new talent, 42 per cent said it was difficult to fill certain positions.

A record 402 companies responded to the random survey which was emailed the week of June 22.
According to the USA Direct Marketing Association, marketers - commercial and nonprofit - spent $176.9billion on direct marketing in 2008,  which accounted for 52.1 per cent of all ad expenditures in the United States. Measured against total US sales, these advertising expenditures generated approximately $2.057 trillion in incremental sales.

Last year, direct marketing accounted for approximately ten per cent of total US gross domestic product.

Also, there are today 1.6 million direct marketing employees in the US. Their collective sales efforts directly support 9.3 million other jobs, accounting for a total of 10.9 million US jobs.

Results of past surveys can be found in the USA DMA’s Statistical Fact Book and on the website of Bernhart Associates Executive Search (www.bernhart.com).

Jerry Bernhart.