Though administrative and clerical work is often seen as a replaceable skill set in America, new findings suggest that your business' secretary has never felt more secure about their future with the company.
A recent evaluation of the Randstad Administrative & Clerical Worker Employee Confidence Index, which is a measure of overall confidence among U.S. administrative and clerical workers, grew 3.8 points to a total of 51.6 percent in the last quarter of 2012. This is great news for all forms of administrative assistants, as it indicates the highest levels of administrative confidence since Q3 2007. As executive vice president at Randstad US, Phyllis Finley notes:
"As the job market for administrative and clerical workers continues to improve, we see a corresponding optimism among workers in how they view the economy, available jobs and their willingness to job search."
A study conducted by Harris Online on behalf of Randstad indicated that more than a third of workers surveyed felt good about their prospects for finding a new job, while most surveyed thought the future looked bright for their current employers. Furthermore, Randstad found that 58% of administrative and clerical workers expect the job market to pick up in 2013.
That doesn't mean that it's all rainbows and unicorns for your local secretaries, however. As Randstad notes in Q3 findings for the administrative and clerical sectore, this subsection has the lowest confidence of any of the industries that Randstad tracks. What's worse, that's after a 10 point gain from just over a year ago.
In all, while significant gains seemed to be in the future for clerical workers everywhere, they're not out of the woods just yet. Their employment largely hinges on the health of the economy, and with the current threat of a government shut-down thanks to the sequester, there is plenty of room to doubt how much longer this economic rebound can sustain itself. With that being said, try to go easy on your administrative assistants and secretaries, chances are they're every bit as stressed as you are.
