Hiring Demand for Sales & Related Occupations has been growing 4.3% a month since February, according to data from WANTED Analytics. WANTED Analytics tracks the number of online job ads on over 1,000 employment websites.
This positive trend has affected most metropolitan areas and detailed occupations in the Sales category (BLS Standard Occupation Major Group 410000).
The "normal" monthly growth rate experienced during the 2006/2007/2008 pre-recession period was only 0.3%. In other words, Hiring Demand is growing at almost 15 times the rate it did during normal economic times. Most of this can be attributed to "catching up", however – about 950,000 people lost their jobs in the Retail Industry for example, a 6% drop in employment. There are still 30,000 fewer Sales job ads now than there were 2 years ago (136,000 in October compared to 169,000 in November 2007).
The following table and graph detail Hiring Demand trends over the past four years. The natural log of the number of online job ads is used to facilitate trending analysis
| Period | "Sales Jobs, Monthly Growth Rate" |
|---|---|
| OCT 2006 – MAY 2008 | +0.3% |
| JUNE 2008 – JAN 2009 | -5.2% |
| FEB 2009 – Current | +4.3% |
Source: WANTED Analytics
The 'Top 4' Sales occupations in terms of job ad volume have all seen improvements since February. Hiring Demand for 'Retail Sales Workers' is almost back to pre-recession levels, and Hiring Demand for their Supervisors is also showing a very good trend. The only occupation to have seen a little bit of slippage in the past couple months are 'Wholesale Sales Representatives'.
Source: WANTED Analytics
The 'Top 5' US metro areas have also all seen improvements in Hiring Demand for Sales workers:
Source: WANTED Analytics
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