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BLS report shows loss of 54,000 jobs in August

By Juli Morris on September 3, 2010 in BLS Nonfarm Employment.

Amid growing investor pessimism in the economic recovery, the Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported that employment fell by 54,000 jobs in August, a somewhat smaller loss than consensus estimates had predicted. On a positive note, job losses for June and July were both revised upwards. The economy is still short 7.8 million jobs from the employment levels seen at start of the recession in December 2007.

The August numbers reflect the loss of an additional 114,000 temporary government jobs for the 2010 Census. Private-sector payrolls added 67,000 jobs, slightly fewer than last month. Jobs were added in health care, mining, construction and temporary help services. Manufacturing jobs declined, and jobs in retail trade remained unchanged.

Along with the preliminary report for July, the BLS issued its Final Estimate of job losses for June at 175,000 jobs, up 46,000 from its revised estimate of -221,000. July's preliminary estimate was revised upwards by 77,000 jobs, from a loss of 131,000. One more revision for July may still occur.

The unemployment rate rose slightly to  9.6 percent, consistent with forecasts.

Know your competition

By Richard Parris on August 18, 2010 in WANTED Analytics.

Staffing firms and Corporate HR can get the jump on their competition with WANTED Analytics™ by creating – in mere seconds – a profile of the current demand for specific occupations and finding out which employers have been hiring for those occupations over time.

What companies in your industry are hiring? What positions do they need to fill? What are they offering to encourage job seekers to apply?

In the example below, I am looking to fill a position for a head cook in a local Philadelphia Bistro. I have specified that I only want postings that were available in the Philadelphia MSA in the last 120 days, that I don't want duplicate postings, and that I don't want to see postings from known staffing firms.

Cooks in Philadephia

Source: WANTED Analytics

With access to millions of unduplicated job postings nationwide, you can filter results to a level impossible to do with aggregator websites.  AND, you can see postings that have since expired and are no longer available to the public.

The details and descriptions can be viewed and/or downloaded for the postings – long after they have been taken down – allowing you to view benefits, bonuses, and perks that may make those jobs more (or less) desirable. This allows you to tailor your job requirements, salary, and benefits to increase your chance at getting qualified candidates, fill positions more quickly, and save money.

Strategic planning and HR strategy becomes a lot easier once you have a clear picture of the competitive landscape.

Getting prospects to call you back

By Richard Parris on August 10, 2010 in WANTED Analytics.

One of the biggest challenges salespeople face every day is getting prospects to respond to their calls and emails. Calls go to voice mail, and emails are ignored. Getting prospects to return messages and email is no easy task. You need a "hook" that can trigger a desire to learn more.

With WANTED Analytics, users are empowered by the ability to grab months of research in a flash, and see online recruitment from the clouds.

The question I am asked most often is, "How can I  use it?"

Show prospects you know what’s going on with them, and their market – show them you’re the person they should be talking to. Send an email with our charts and graphs pasted in telling them after exhaustive research into their online posting activity you have the solution to their recruitment needs and can help save them money by getting positions filled quickly.

Using the phrase “save money” and combining it with “personalized data” on their recruitment history, along with visual proof, is a surefire way to get prospects to return your calls and emails.

Experience and feedback have shown us that you will greatly increase the number of callbacks and email replies if you show your prospects WANTED data. Let us do the work!

Preliminary report from BLS shows loss of 131,000 jobs in July

By Juli Morris on August 6, 2010 in BLS Nonfarm Employment, Labor Market Dynamics.

With US markets watching closely, the Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported that employment fell by 131,000 jobs in July, a greater loss than consensus estimates had predicted. The July numbers reflect the loss of an additional 143,000 temporary government jobs for the 2010 Census. Private-sector payrolls added 71,000 jobs, slightly fewer than last month. The economy is still short 7.8 million jobs from the employment levels seen at start of the recession in December 2007.

Jobs were added in health care, mining, manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing. Jobs in professional and business services, temporary help services and construction all dipped slightly. Jobs in financial activities continued to trend downward.

Along with the preliminary report for July, the BLS issued its Final Estimate of job gains for May at 432,000 jobs, down 1,000 from its revised estimate of 433,000. June's preliminary estimate was revised significantly downwards, for a loss of 221,000 jobs. One more revision for June may still occur.

The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5 percent; economists had predicted a slight rise.

IT Hiring Staggers in Q2 – Tech Stocks drop 8%

By Charles Thibault on July 30, 2010 in Computer/Math/IT, Information Technology - XLK.

After 12 months of steady growth, hiring in the Information Technology sector went flat in Q2. The S&P Technology index fell by 8% during the second quarter of 2010 as a result (NYSE:XLK).

The following graphs the number of new online job postings for IT workers in the United States, monthly:

Source: WANTED Analytics - Hiring Demand Dashboard

15 months ago, there were 72,000 paid-for online job postings for IT workers in the United States (we exclude free sites like Craig's List). Online job postings for IT workers grew by about 2.4% a month on average for a full year – the equivalent of an additional 2,350 new job postings a month – before settling at the 102,000 mark in March. Since then, however, hiring for new IT workers has gone flat, and even fell by 1.7% in April.

Overall hiring is still half its pre-recession levels.

Stock markets have taken notice: since hitting a 52-week high of 24.08 in April, the S&P 500 Technology sector SPDR ETF  sits at 22.19 today, a 7.8% drop (NYSE:XLK). This is a better result than a month ago (July 2), when the sector index stood at 20.29,  a 15.7% drop relative to the April high. The pick-up in the sector index over the past month has been matched by a slight increase in June IT Hiring.

The following graph shows the number of online job postings for IT workers in the United States (using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Standard Occupational Classification system for "Computer Specialists") and the evolution of the S&P Technology index (NYSE:XLK).

Source: WANTED Analytics, Google Finance

More important, however, is the analysis of the yearly returns of the S&P Technology index and the yearly growth in Hiring Demand: equity analysts care about the future returns of an index, and yearly growth rate in Hiring Demand appropriately captures evolving temporal dynamics as well as having the advantage of being free of seasonal variation. Notice how the stock market index picked up about 6 months before hiring did – stock markets are usually forward-looking by about six months. Notice too how the slow-down in the Hiring Demand growth rate in February has caused returns of the S&P Technology sector index to lose steam. In other words, the stock markets may have gotten a little ahead of themselves, and the slow-down in hiring meant that aggressive forward-looking expectations were no longer sustainable.

Source: WANTED Analytics, Google Finance

The following table lists the Top 25 companies in terms of IT job postings over the past three months:

AdvertiserJob Postings – May, June, July 2010
Deloitte4,098
General Dynamics Information Technology3,992
Microsoft Corporation2,680
Northrop Grumman2,238
SPARTA Inc1,818
Unitedhealth Group1,579
IBM1,523
SAIC1,501
AT&T1,404
HP1,313
Amazon.com1,290
Raytheon1,274
ManTech International1,178
Lockheed Martin1,038
Booz Allen Hamilton876
Emc Corporation860
SRA International836
GE Energy814
BAE Systems753
Kaiser Permanente667
Dell653
Google602
Harris Corporation601
Yahoo!592
Agile Enterprise Solutions578

We've launched our new Support Site!

By Richard Parris on July 28, 2010 in WANTED Analytics.

We are very happy to announce that WANTED has a new support site. Now visitors and customers alike can benefit from our new knowledge base, FAQ, and downloads section. Although anyone can visit our support center, logging into My Analytics will give users access to additional information, a training calendar, training videos, and a troubleshooter.

Our Knowledge Base will continue to be a work-in-progress as we update it with frequently asked questions and answers inspired by our customer support tickets.

Users can follow the progress of their open support tickets, update their tickets, and view their support history. Managers can also request access to view their organizations' tickets as well.

This is a step towards providing our customers with a comprehensive support system as robust as the products it supports.

We hope you find it a useful resource, and we welcome your feedback!

WSJ Economists Predict Gain of 1.9 Million Jobs over Next Twelve Months

By Juli Morris on July 16, 2010 in Labor Market Dynamics.

Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal in June predict that the U.S. economy will gain an average of nearly 160,000 jobs per month over the next twelve months. Optimism seems to be waning a bit: the same economists predicted average monthly gains of 180,000 in June, and 196,000 in May. A year ago, the July 2009 survey forecast losses of 70,000 per month.

There is also little optimism for significant improvement to the unemployment rate, as predictions were largely unchanged from prior months. This month's survey forecasts a rate of 9.4 percent by the end of 2010. Growth in 2011 is expected to remain slow, with a rate of 9.0 percent in June 2011 and 8.6 percent in December. The timeline for regaining "full employment" (5.5%) was predicted to be at least 2015 by about half of the economists surveyed.

Reflecting the current political debate, economists were split about the ongoing Senate battle over long-term unemployment benefits:

59% of those who responded to the question … said if they were in Congress they would vote to renew the extension of unemployment compensation for up to 99 weeks, a proposal that is stalled in the Senate amid partisan maneuvering and worries about the federal deficit.

"An abrupt end to unemployment benefits could do more to damage the deficit than repair it by weakening the recovery and forcing the long-term unemployed to apply for more costly long-term benefits, such as Social Security," said Diane Swonk of Mesirow Financial.

But 19 economists oppose an extension. It "increases incentive to be unemployed," said Ram Bhagavatula of Combinatorics Capital LLC.

This month's Wall Street Journal survey of economists was conducted from July 9-12. Each month the WSJ asks economists to estimate the average monthly change in nonfarm payrolls over the next twelve months. That is, the monthly changes the BLS reports each month, for the next twelve months, divided by twelve.

Knowing is half the battle

By Richard Parris on July 14, 2010 in WANTED Analytics.

Knowing the employment market is what WANTED does – and we do it like no one else can. Having access to top quality information can make the difference.

A great example we came across using our Hiring Demand Dashboard™ was the national increase in job postings for Personnel Recruiters.

One year ago, last month, the unduplicated job posting volume for Personnel Recruiters (SOC 13107102) was at an all-time low. Over the last year, based on the names of those employers posting these positions, we can see many Temp Agencies have been increasing their own staff to handle the demand for temporary workers in the workplace.

Some analysts think that the hiring of temporary help can be seen as a precursor to hiring full-time workers as employers begin to recover.

personnel recruiters

The graph above uses our unique filters that clean the data, removing unwanted sources and postings from the national database to give an accurate view of unduplicated job posting volume for specific occupations over time.

Being able to see trends in specific occupations so one can leverage and allocate the right resources in the right markets is one way WANTED Analytics™ can help your Business Developers and Executive Management.

Preliminary report from BLS shows loss of 125,000 jobs in June

By Juli Morris on July 2, 2010 in BLS Nonfarm Employment.

Amid fears of a stalled economic recovery, the Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported that employment fell by 125,000 jobs in June, consistent with consensus estimates. The June numbers reflect a loss of 225,000 temporary government jobs for the 2010 Census. Private-sector payrolls added 83,000 jobs. The economy is still short 7.9 million jobs from the employment levels seen at start of the recession in December 2007.

Jobs gains were more broad-based in June, with jobs added in leisure and hospitality, temporary help services, management and technical consulting, business support services, health care, mining, manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing. Construction employment continued its decline.

Along with the preliminary report for June, the BLS issued its Final Estimate of job gains for April at 313,000 jobs, up 23,000 from its revised estimate of 290,000. May's preliminary estimate was revised slightly upwards, for a gain of 433,000 jobs. One more revision for May may still occur.

The unemployment rate dropped to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent; economists had predicted a slight rise.

This Week's Reading

By Juli Morris on June 25, 2010

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