44% of employers plan on additional hiring this year

Forty-four percent of employers plan to hire full-time, permanent employees in the New Year and 51% will hire temporary employees, according to a new Harris Poll sponsored by CareerBuilder. A similar poll conducted last fall by Challenger, Gray & Christmas found more optimism, with 60% of surveyed employers anticipating more hiring in 2018.

In the CareerBuilder poll, 45% percent of HR managers currently have jobs they cannot fill because they cannot find qualified talent and 58% report that they have jobs that stay open for 12 weeks or longer.

At the same time, employers will have a harder time holding on to current employees with 40% of workers planning to change jobs in the New Year.

While employers say functions such as customer service, sales, information technology and production will top their list for full-time, permanent hiring in 2018, they also pointed to other key areas where they will be adding headcount: