Media economy
Job wise, it's not looking all that bad
By Kevin Downey
Oct 17, 2008 - 8:56:23 AM

The economy is tanking, ad spending is slumping, and unemployment is on the rise. But so far the job market for media folks is holding up fairly well.

While there have been layoffs, such as at Starcom MediaVest Group a few weeks back, media departments for the most part aren’t tossing out a slew of pink slips. And recruiters say it doesn’t appear that widespread cuts are coming.

That’s markedly different from the recession earlier this decade when hundreds of positions were eliminated, notably following the collapse of countless dot.coms.

Moreover, some agencies are still hiring, according to recruiters, particularly media people with experience in online planning and buying and in multicultural media.

"There has been some staff trimming here and there, but most of it seems related to client changes," says Kurt O’Hare, president of O’Hare and Associates in New York.

"Companies still need to get the work done. They’re probably doing more with less but that doesn’t mean they can ignore a critical hole in the org chart."

That’s not to say the weak economy isn’t having any effect. But the the belt-tightening has been largely through attrition. 

"We’re not seeing any big layoffs and we don’t anticipate any," says Patricia Sklar, president of Sklar & Associates in Chicago. "What’s happening is that when someone leaves, they don’t fill the position."

What makes this downturn different from the one earlier this decade is that this time around there just aren't that many jobs to cut.

Back in the late '90s, a boom period for media, the internet then was a fairly new medium and advertisers were pouring billions of dollars into it. Agencies responded by beefing up their staffs to handle all the work that was coming in. But many of these new hires didn’t have a lot of experience.

When the dot.com crash came in late 2000, agencies began cutting just as fast, and thousands were put on the street. 

But that recovery was slow, and agencies were slow to staff up again. The business has never fully caught up to those pre-dot.com levels.

"Agencies are running pretty lean but they still need to get projects out the door," says Jadey Ryndak, regional manager at recruiting firm Paladin Recruiting and Staffing in Chicago. "At the same time we’re hearing about some layoffs, the freelance side has picked up."

This recession is also different in that the economy has been slumping for months, unlike earlier this decade when it suddenly collapsed and was worsened by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Agencies have made staffing changes over time, rather than making an abrupt change.

Ad spending was basically flat in 2007, and expenditures in the first half of this year dipped 1.6 percent from the same time in 2007, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

Some agencies have implemented hiring freezes and many are holding off on giving employees raises to deal with the slowdown.

And some agencies are putting off hiring new employees until the economy turns around.

"There have been some moratoriums on hiring, but I haven’t been hearing about systemic hiring freezes that will last for an extended period of time," says Ryndak. "A lot of the agencies are really in wait-and-see mode."