Hiring Demand Indicators – Jobs. Trends. Insight.

National Labor Demand Grows – 37,000 More Online Job Ads in April

By Charles Thibault on May 26, 2010 in Hiring Demand Indicators, Labor Market Dynamics, S&P 500 - SPY, Unemployment Insurance Claims.

Labor Demand in the United States continued to grow in April.

In the last 4 weeks, 1.35 million new job ads were posted on paid-for online job boards. This includes 158,000 postings on CareerBuilder, 157,000 on Monster, 64,000 on HotJobs, and 71,000 job ads on Dice, an IT specialized job board.

There were 37,000 more online job ads posted in April compared to March. Considering the data collected so far for May, those monthly gains have remained stable at 33,000 new online job ads.

This growth comes after a solid first part of 2010 in terms of labor demand. The US was finally able to start generating gains in employment, even if we remove temporary hiring at the Census Bureau.

Compared to January, even the number of new Unemployment Insurance Claims fell from 490,000/week to around 450,000.

Source: WANTED Analytics

However, recent growth in Hiring Demand has decelerated a bit, although it remains positive in absolute terms. April did see an increase of 37,000 online job ads – but we had seen gains of 100,000 for March, 130,000 for February, and 143,000 for January. Even the number of new UI claims showed weakness last week, rising by 25,000 new claimants.

April 2010 BLS Nonfarm Forecast: +220,000

By Charles Thibault on April 28, 2010 in BLS Nonfarm Employment, Hiring Demand Indicators.

Click chart to view full size

WANTED Technologies expects the Bureau of Labor Statistics will report Nonfarm Employment gains of 220,000 workers for April 2010. The BLS Employment Situation for April 2010 is scheduled to be released on May 7, 2010, at 8:30 A.M. Eastern Time.

The BLS reported employment gains of 162,000 nonfarm workers for March of 2010, after offsetting employment changes of -14,000 and +14,000 workers for January and February.

This month's forecast is based on the following:

Hiring Demand – the number of online job postings – has grown since last month. Compared to the previous month, there were 10,000 more online job ads on major national job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs). This was a 1.8% increase on a seasonally adjusted basis. In other words, hiring, as expressed through the number of online job ads, has been rising at a slow and steady pace, presaging continued employment gains.
Although Craig's List is NOT included in our forecasting models, it experienced a "level-shift" in January of this year which has held up so far. In 2009 the number of job postings on Craig's List was around 170,000, weekly. More recently that number has hovered around 210,000 new job ads a week. Craig's List is the largest "job board" by volume in the United States and is a good indicator of demand for low salary or hourly jobs.
Over the period covering March 13 to April 12th, the 4-week moving average count of new Unemployment Insurance Claims has fallen by about 4,000. Over a 4-week cumulative period that means that 16,000 fewer people have filed an unemployment insurance claim.
Since February 8th the S&P 500 index has gained 15%, suggesting that others share in this positive expectation.
Our forecast for this month also includes the hiring of an estimated 66,000 Census workers. Most of the US Census Bureau hiring will be effectuated in May of this year, where we can expect (temporary) employment gains of 350,000 nonfarm workers due to the decennial census alone.

IT Hiring Demand Maintains Growth Trend; Washington, DC Surpasses New York

By Charles Thibault on December 10, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT, Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand for IT workers remained on trend in November, according to data from WANTED Analytics which tracks the number of online job ads on over 1,500 employment websites. On a seasonally adjusted basis, IT Hiring Demand is up 0.5%.

The end of November usually marks the start of a two month seasonal hiring slowdown. We were in fact expecting the number of job ads to fall slightly on a seasonally unadjusted basis, as shown in the graph below.

Source: WANTED Analytics

Labor Market Situation Positive – National Hiring Demand Trending +2.1% monthly since March

By Charles Thibault on November 17, 2009 in Hiring Demand Indicators.

National Hiring Demand has been growing at a rate of 2.1% a month since March of this year according to data from WANTED Analytics, which tracks the number of online job ads on over 1,000 job boards. 'Hiring Demand' is the most timely and analytically flexible measure of what's traditionally labeled Labor Demand. Hiring Demand leads published labor market data such as Unemployment Insurance Claims (2 weeks) and Nonfarm Employment (4 months).

Before the recession, National Hiring Demand grew at an average rate of 0.7% per month. Recent growth is three times faster than that. This allows us to change our outlook from "stable" to "positive".

Several industry segments are performing strongly. These include Retail Sales; Food; Transportation; Production; Education; and Healthcare.

Most occupations that were hit by the 2007 real estate/sub-prime mortgage crisis are still under-performing the rest of the economy, however. These include Architecture/Engineering; and Construction.

Hiring Demand for upper-level Management has not caught up either, although demand for their underlings has. Indeed, Hiring Demand for most "office jobs" has been gaining ground since March, including Business/Finance; Office/Admin Support; and Computer/Math. Once enough of these workers are hired and the economic outlook remains positive for long enough, Hiring Demand for Management Occupations will catch up.

The labor market situation over the past 4 years can be divvied up into three parts:

Pre-recession: October 2005 to December 2008.
Recessionary: January 2008 to February 2009 (some can argue that the recession had two periods, which can be supported by the fact that most measures of economic health trended downwards slightly but "fell of a cliff" during the financial crisis of September 2008).
Recovery: March 2009 until today.

The choice of March as the beginning of the recovery period is based on the stock market bull rally which started on March 9th, 2009.

The following table summarizes trends in Hiring Demand (average monthly growth rates), over these three periods, for all 23 major Standard Occupation Codes as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, sorting descending on the most recent growth rates.

SOC CODE	SOC DESCRIPTION	OCT 2005 to DEC 2007 26 months	JAN 2008 to FEB 2009 14 months	MARCH 2009 to NOV 2009 9 months
000000	All Occupations	0.7%	-3.5%	2.1%
270000	Arts / Design / Entertainment / Media	1.1%	-4.1%	7.7%
350000	Food Preparation and Serving	0.8%	-6.4%	7.5%
530000	Transportation / Material Moving	-0.5%	-5.3%	5.8%
410000	Sales	0.3%	-3.2%	5.5%
550000	Military Specific	1.9%	0.0%	4.1%
130000	Business / Financial	-0.5%	-4.0%	3.6%
190000	Life / Physical / Social Science	0.9%	-3.1%	3.1%
490000	Installation / Maintenance / Repair	0.1%	-6.0%	2.9%
210000	Community / Social Services	0.4%	-4.1%	2.8%
510000	Production	0.3%	-6.3%	2.8%
150000	Computer / Mathematical	1.2%	-2.2%	2.7%
430000	Office / Administrative Support	-0.2%	-4.6%	2.6%
250000	Education / Training / Library	1.7%	-3.7%	2.5%
310000	Healthcare Support	2.1%	-1.4%	2.1%
230000	Legal	0.5%	-5.9%	1.5%
290000	Healthcare Practitioners and Technical	2.4%	-2.1%	0.4%
110000	Management	0.6%	-4.1%	0.1%
170000	Architecture / Engineering	0.8%	-3.7%	-0.2%
330000	Protective Service	2.1%	-4.1%	-0.5%
370000	Building Maintenance / Grounds Cleaning	0.6%	-7.9%	-1.3%
390000	Personal Care / Service	0.1%	-5.5%	-2.0%
450000	Farming / Fishing / Forestry	0.5%	-4.4%	-2.1%
470000	Construction / Extraction	-1.4%	-7.9%	-2.8%

It's important to note that rises in National Hiring Demand and continued drops in Nonfarm Employment are not mutually exclusive. As we've mentioned before, two factors affect changes in employment: Job Hires and Job Exits. Job Hires can continue to grow, but if there are fewer Hires than Exits, we have not yet passed the "replacement level threshold".

IT Hiring Demand Robust in October – Trending up 4.9% per Month (update)

By Charles Thibault on November 9, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT, Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand for "Computer and Mathematical Occupations" grew by 6.5% in October on a seasonally unadjusted basis according to data from WANTED Analytics 2.0. This confirms the positive trend we saw begin in June, when Hiring Demand starting growing at an average monthly rate of 4.9%. This positive trend has affected most US metro areas.

WANTED Analytics tracks the number of online job ads on over 1,000 employment websites:

Source: WANTED Analytics

IT Hiring Demand grew faster than the rest of the economy – national Hiring Demand, all Occupations considered, grew by 4.0% over the same period. Removing the positive effect that IT workers had on the national average, national Hiring Demand grew by only 3.3%. (In other words, IT occupations contributed 0.7% to the overall growth in national Hiring Demand).

The table below details changes in Hiring Demand by occupation. Occupations are defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and their Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System. Five occupations saw increases in Hiring Demand, while three saw drops. Drops were concentrated in "Computer Software Engineers", both "Applications" and "Systems Software".

SOC	SOC Description	Percent Change, OCT (NSA)
000000	All Occupations	4.0%
150000	Computer and Mathematical Occupations	6.5%
151071	Network and Computer Systems Administrators	9.5%
151021	Computer Programmers	9.1%
151061	Database Administrators	7.9%
151081	Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts	7.7%
151041	Computer Support Specialists	5.7%
151051	Computer Systems Analysts	-1.2%
151031	Computer Software Engineers, Applications	-5.9%
151032	Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software	-27.0%

What's more, IT Hiring Demand is growing faster now than it did during the "boom times" of 2006/2007. The following table and weekly time series chart, where the count of online job ads is taken as a natural log to facilitate trending analysis, clearly shows this:

Period	Monthly Growth Rate
Oct.2006 – June 2008	+1.2%
July 2008 – May 2009	-6.5%
June 2009 – Current	+4.9%

National Hiring Improves 0.25% in September

By Charles Thibault on October 16, 2009 in Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand picked up 0.25% in September on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to data from WANTED Analytics, which tracks the number of online job ads on over 1,000 employment websites.

There were 1,108,000 new online job ads in September compared to the 1,105,000 new online job ads posted in August. This improvement of 3,000 new online job ads comes despite the fact that September seasonal factors usually drive down the number of new online job ads.

Source: WANTED Analytics

This improvement comes after a shaky August, where we saw a drop of 0.8% in the level of online job ads on a seasonally adjusted basis.

IT Hiring Demand Improves 1.1%

By Charles Thibault on September 29, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT, Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand for Computer and Mathematical Occupations has improved 1.1% over the past month, according to data from WANTED Analytics.

There are still 117,000 fewer online job ads for Computer and Mathematical workers compared to a year ago – a drop of 38.7%. However, a month ago, the year-over-year decline stood at 39.8%. This relative improvement of 1.1% is a simple way of controlling for seasonal fluctuations. Over the same period, National Hiring Demand for all occupations improved by 2.9%.

Source: WANTED Analytics

The following double-bar chart compares September's year-over-year drop (burgundy) to August's (gray). Burgundy bars that are shorter than gray ones indicate relative improvement since last month. The chart can be enlarged by clicking on it.

Click chart to view full size

Several occupations are worth noting.

IT Hiring Demand Down 2.3% in August, Networking Workers Hit Hardest

By Charles Thibault on September 1, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT, Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand for Information Technology workers has dropped 2.3% since mid-July, according to data from WANTED Analytics. This fall occurs after an upswing started in the spring. National Hiring Demand dropped 0.7% over the same period.

Source: WANTED Analytics

The following bar chart compares the year-over-year percent changes from July 2009 to those in August 2009. Burgundy columns extending past the gray columns means that there are sharper year-over-year losses compared to last month.

All IT occupations have lost more ground than the national average.

Click chart to view full size

Hiring Demand up 2.4% in July and Trending Upwards

By Charles Thibault on August 13, 2009 in Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand improved 2.4% in July on a seasonally adjusted basis. There were 132,000 more new job ads in July, which now total 1,433,000.

With the exception of a three week period in June, Hiring Demand has been growing an average of 0.8% a week since March, or 3.6% a month for the past 4 months. This corresponds to the rally in the stock markets.

Improvements are spread across most sectors of the US economy. Seven of the top eight Metropolitan Areas improved, as did 19 of 23 broad Occupational groups covered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Four weeks ago, Hiring Demand was down 29.5% on a year-over-year basis. Hiring Demand is now down only 27.1% compared to last year. This relative improvement of 2.4% controls for seasonal fluctuations.

Source: WANTED Analytics

« Older Entries