Denver’s Management Drain

According to the Denver Business Journal (“Right Management: 14% of Denver job seekers left town to find a job in 2009,” Denver Business Journal, Feb. 24, 2010), 14 percent of mid- to senior-level employees who were looking for work in 2009 had to leave town to find it. The statistic came from Right Management, a talent mangement company owned by Manpower, which surveyed the 3,000 or so managers in Colorado and across the Midwest who it helped with career transitions in 2009.

When I first read that statistic, it sounded appalling. Fourteen percent? That’s one seventh of Denver’s unemployed managers!

Then I realized Denver’s relocation rate exactly matched the national average — and neither statistic has changed over the last couple of years, despite the recession. Besides, even though some Denver managers are leaving (okay, one out of seven at the upper levels), at the same time, some managers are moving to Denver to get jobs — they’re relocating away from other cities. All that really tells us is that we live in a society in which moving around is not uncommon.

Just another case of the media blowing a nonstory out of proportion.

The story I’m waiting for is the story on entrepreneurs making jobs for themselves by starting, or buying, small businesses — like self-storage facilities….

Tags: Denver, managers, relocation, Right Management, survey

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 11:41 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.