CFOs Not Planning Hiring Binge in 2010

Want to get an idea of your chances of getting hired this year? Who better to ask than the people who control a company's purse strings—the CFO's. That's exactly what the folks at Duke University and CFO Magazine did, and the results aren't particularly encouraging—at least for 2010.

According to the Duke/CFO Magazine survey—which is based on responses from 620 CFOs across the country—payrolls are likely to climb a mere 0.2 percent over the next 12 months. Bad news indeed. And, worse, BusinessWeek reports that the CFOs "projected the world’s largest economy would not recoup the 8.4 million jobs lost since the recession began, the worst employment slump in the post-World War II era, until 2012 at the earliest."

The one small crumb of comfort is that at least the average CFO is seeing stability and some sort of recovery ahead. Sure, they might be outsourcing jobs—as IBM is rumored to be doing right now—but at least they're foreseeing a recovery in profits and planning an increase in capital spending. That latter action is sure to have some kind of knock-on effect on hiring—even if it's not within the companies paying for the upgrades.

--Posted by Phil Stott, Vault.com