A significant number of employees in the US who were given pink slips last year have landed new jobs, mostly in the new fields, a survey said.
According to a survey by job portal CareerBuilder, 60% of respondents who were laid off in the last year said they had found new jobs, with 88% of them finding full-time positions.
The survey was conducted across the US by Harris Interactive, on behalf of CareerBuilder, between May and June among 809 employees, laid off from full-time jobs last year.
Of those workers who are still searching for new opportunities, 56% said they were nervous about returning to work after an extended period of unemployment.
On why they felt anxious about re-entering the workforce, 50% of the respondents said that it was the pressure to prove themselves. About 40% pointed to the fear of the unknown situation, and 21% cited new technologies with which they might not be familiar.
"We need to do a better job as a nation to help workers identify jobs that are in demand today and are projected to grow in the future. We have a growing skills gap and the need to get millions of Americans back to work. As the economy recovers, we need to focus on retraining and 're-skilling' workers to help them move to new fields with a greater number of opportunities," CareerBuilder President (North America) Brent Rasmussen said.
Interestingly, the survey said that more than half of the respondents (54%) were working in entirely different fields than their previous jobs.
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Also, the majority of those who found new jobs reported a similar or higher pay than their previous position.
The survey further said that 45% reported taking a pay cut, an improvement from 47% last year, while 27% of employees surveyed found jobs with higher pay, up from 22% last year.
The survey said that 36% of the respondents relocated to a different city. Among those who had not found jobs yet, about one in four said they were considering starting their own businesses.