MarkWhitaker74's blog

Crisis in Europe, markets in turmoil, people rioting, lack of market confidence......all these problem weigh heavy on the shoulders of of business. Investment decisions are weighed against the possibilities of future worldwide economic issues and the potential for a huge economic storm.

With all the recent world turmoil - the Euro economic crisis, problems in the Middle East & business confidence being zapped by fear it is important to keep a perspective and keep building something positive. The world has had many challenges before and it has overcome them, and if we can focus our efforts these problems can also be addressed, worked on and solved.

The start of the holiday season has brought in with it some very interesting sales figures from the ecommerce world. US online shoppers spending $1.25bn on Cyber Monday / the 5 days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday brought in $3.57bn in sales (up 20.5% on last year) / Mobile sales tripling on Cyber Monday & Black Friday. According to IBM SmarterCommerce, over the 5 day holiday period sales of 500 larger online retailers was up +30%.

It was interesting to see with Apple's results that they had a share drop once the results were announced. It seems for the first time in ten years, Apple did not meet the analyst estimates.

News today is that Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo has been fired by the board of the company. They clearly have seen a lack of successful change during her tenure and feel the time is ripe to move on. Yahoo's share price rose 6% on the news - and so this has obviously been well received by investors.

Where now though for Yahoo? We have seen them go in the direction of search, then media and then they've moved into content. To show how far their market share has fallen - it is expected that Facebook will overtake them this year in online display advertising for the US.

Being in the recruitment industry, you obviously get exposure to a wide variety of companies - each with their own advantages as well as their own challenges. Differing approaches to the value that is placed on each position, as well its place within the company structure mean things move at different speeds, as well as differing attitudes to such things as salary.

US unemployment for June stood at 9.2%. For the Tech professionals however, that figure was 3.3% (source, BusinessWeek). Demand for such employees as digital marketing managers, mobile developers & cloud computing engineers has proved very high. All this shows the dual-track nature of employment / the economy. Of course, the hope is always that all employment figures will come down - but it is positive to see some good news within employment figures.