Exec MBA Search Exec. Here are some fearless forecasts from a panel of experts.
Forecasting is a dicey business.
Just ask any TV meteorologist who has ever told viewers to wear sunglasses for a day that turned out to require umbrellas. It gets even trickier when you're trying to predict what will happen with the current job market. As 2000 has drawn to a close, newspapers have run front-page stories on how many jobs some of the largest U.S. employers are slashing. Insurer Aetna is stripping 5,000 from its payroll, General Motors is cutting 10,000, and Whirlpool plans to ax as many as 6,000. Then there are the former dot-commers, now numbering tens of thousands, who lost their jobs in recent months when their startup employers ran out of cash and couldn't extract any more from wary investors.