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Advertiser Watch: Unitedhealth Group, Hewlett-Packard, Liberty Mutual, Gap Inc., Yahoo!

By Charles Thibault on December 31, 2009 in Advertiser Watch.

Every week, WANTED Technologies produces what we call a "Gazelles Report". The Gazelles Report lists companies whose number of online job ads has spiked. We look at the number of jobs posted over the past month, and compare that to what we've seen in the past year. If the number of job ads is significantly different that what we've observed in the past year – in a statistical sense – that triggers a "Gazelles alert". In our Advertiser Watch feature, we look at 5 companies that appeared in this week's Gazelles report, focusing mostly on publicly traded companies.

Source: WANTED Analytics

Unitedhealth Group (NYSE:UNH) has shown consistent upward trending in both the number of new online job ads and its stock price. The correlation between Hiring Demand and Unitedhealth stock price has been 0.47 since the start of the year. Unitedhealth Hiring Demand has grown 5% this month, leading into the normal seasonal dip seen in late December. Not surprisingly, the top occupations that UNH posts for are "Medical and Health Services Managers" and "Registered Nurses". "Computer Systems Analysts" come in third.

December BLS Nonfarm Forecast: up 75,000

By Charles Thibault on December 28, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment.

The number of new online job postings continued on its positive trend in December, supporting continued improvements in the labor market situation. Based on improving Hiring Demand and positive signals from several different labor market variables, WANTED Technologies expects the BLS will announce December Nonfarm Employment gains of 75,000 workers. The BLS will release the Employment Situation Summary on Friday, January 8^th at 8:30am.

This would be the employment gain since the recession started 23 months ago. Last month, the BLS estimated that nonfarm employment shrunk by only 11,000 workers. The graph below shows year-over-year percent changes in Hiring Demand (new online job ads) and month-over-month changes in US employment (nonfarm). The blue dot represents this month's forecast from WANTED:

Click chart to view full size

Our forecast of an improvement of 75,000 in Nonfarm Employment is based on the following:

Advertiser Watch – JP Morgan Chase, IBM, Microsoft, Cintas, AMCORE Financial

By Charles Thibault on December 21, 2009 in Advertiser Watch.

Every week, WANTED Technologies produces what we call a "Gazelles Report". The Gazelles Report lists companies who's number of online job ads has spiked. We look at the number of jobs posted over the past month, and compare that to what we've seen in the past year. If the number of job ads is significantly different that what we've observed in the past year, that triggers a "Gazelles alert". In our 'Advertiser Watch' feature, we look at 5 companies that show up in our Gazelles report, focusing mostly on publicly traded companies.

Source: WANTED Gazelles Report

UI Claims Rise; Forecast of -6,000 for Next Week

By Charles Thibault on December 18, 2009 in Unemployment Insurance Claims.

The Department of Labor announced this morning that new UI claims increased by 7,000 for the week ending December 5^th. This corresponds to the movements we've seen in Hiring Demand: improving greatly in October/November but softening during this first half of December.

The correlation between the number of new online job ads (Hiring Demand) and unemployment insurance claims has been -0.72 over the past 4 years. As more new online job ads appear on the internet, more people can find work, and fewer must file for unemployment insurance – hence the <negative> sign on the correlation coefficient. What's more, the correlation improves to -0.80 when looking at the one-week lagged value of Hiring Demand, suggesting that Hiring Demand leads published measures of labor market dynamics. (Remember that the "best correlation" possible is -1.0 when two variables move in opposite directions).

Given the strength and robustness of this relationship, we can forecast movements in the seasonally adjusted value of new Unemployment Insurance Claims: WANTED Technologies predicts that new UI Claims will fall by 6,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending Dec.19.

The following graph shows the historical relationship between the number of new online jobs and new Unemployment Insurance Claims, on a seasonally unadjusted basis.

Click chart to view full size

Fortune 1000 Hiring Strong Heading into Holidays, Still Trending Up 2.9%

By Charles Thibault on December 17, 2009 in Fortune 1000.

Fortune 1000 Hiring was very robust in November, according to data from WANTED Analytics. Hiring Demand by the Fortune 1000 companies grew by 2.9% on a seasonally adjusted basis from last month. This is exactly on trend with the 2.9% growth we've seen in this economic sector since the start of the stock market rally in early March of this year.

On a seasonally unadjusted basis and considering the entire month of November, Hiring Demand fell by only 2% compared to October – seasonal movements usually drive down Hiring Demand by 15% from October to November.

We're expecting new job ads, unadjusted, to fall dramatically next week leading up to the Christmas holidays.

Graph: Fortune 1000 Hiring Demand, Monthly, Weekly (4 years)

Source: WANTED Analytics

Hiring Demand for Translators and Linguists Grows; Best Market is Washington + Baltimore

By Charles Thibault on December 15, 2009

National Hiring Demand for Interpreters and Translators has grown significantly over the past several months according to data from WANTED Analytics, which tracks online job ad counts on over 1,500 employment specific websites. Hiring Demand for Interpreters and Translators is above 2007 levels.

Graph: National Hiring Demand (new online job ads) for Interpreters and Translators (SOC 273091)

Source: WANTED Analytics

What's interesting about Hiring Demand for Translators and Interpreters is that a single company represents 15% of the national total Hiring Demand: over the past 4 months, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has posted over 300 jobs for these workers. The next largest advertiser for this type of position is the US Navy, which makes sense given the geographical extent of Navy operations.

Table: Top Advertisers for Interpreters and Translators (SOC 273091), past 4 months

2009-12-15 - Top Advertiser Labels - 273091

Source: WANTED Analytics

UI Claims Rise as Job Ads Fall Slightly

By Charles Thibault on December 11, 2009 in Unemployment Insurance Claims.

The Department of Labor announced this week a rise of 17,000 new UI claims, on a seasonally adjusted basis. This matches the slight fall we saw in our Hiring Demand Indicators .

This week, Hiring Demand grew only 3.9% on a seasonally unadjusted basis. Over the past 5 years, the first week of December usually sees a little bit of a rebound in Hiring Demand. This year's "post-Thanksgiving rebound" was the lowest we've seen in 5 years. This is what drove new UI claims upward. Even last year, when the economy took a huge hit, the first week of December saw Hiring Demand rebound almost 25% after Thanksgiving.

Table: Week-over-Week % Growth, Hiring Demand Indicators, First week of December

Date	Growth Compared to Prior Week
12/3/2005	6.1%
12/2/2006	16.0%
12/8/2007	6.5%
12/6/2008	24.6%
12/5/2009	3.9%

The graph below shows the historical relationship between Hiring Demand Indicators (the number of new online job ads) and seasonally unadjusted Unemployment Insurance claims. The UI claims axes has been inverted: as new job ads appear online, fewer people must file for unemployment insurance. The correlation between the two variables, over the past 4 years, has been -0.72. What's more, the correlation between new UI claims and the one-week lagged value of Hiring Demand improves to -0.78, suggesting that Hiring Demand leads new UI claims.

Click chart to view full size

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

Employment Services Industry Data Signals December Employment Growth

By Charles Thibault on December 9, 2009 in Staffing Industry.

The Employment Services industry has been growing over the past 4 months, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is important because over the past 20 years, the Employment Services industry has lead the rest of the economy both entering and exiting new business cycles – by about 4 months. Recent gains in the Employment Services industry means that US Nonfarm Employment could grow in December.

Movements in the Employment Services industry lead the rest of the economy because of the nature of temporary workers. When the economy is in a downturn, it's easier to end a temp worker's contract that to lay someone off. In an economic upturn, it's less risky to hire someone first as a temp, with the possibility of permanent employment to follow.

The graph below shows employment changes over the past 11 months in the Employment Services industry, the Temporary Help Industry sub-category, and total US Nonfarm Employment. (Changes to Employment Services employment and Temporary Help Services employment are on the left axis, and the change in Nonfarm Employment is on the right axes).

Focus Time Series

Those Pesky Revisions – The Effect of BLS Revisions on NonFarm Forecasts

By Charles Thibault, John Stewart and John Stewart on December 7, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment.

There were two important pieces of information in this month's BLS Employment Situation Summary. First, Nonfarm Employment dropped by only 11,000 – much better than Consensus Estimate that sat at -100,000 and our forecast of -155,000. Second, employment drops from the two previous months were revised upwards: 80,000 fewer people were out of work in September than originally reported, and 79,000 fewer people were out of work in October than originally reported. Together, this month's employment contraction of only 11,000 workers and those two positive revisions of about 80,000 put the US economy much closer to employment growth than what was thought just last week.

That's great news for the economy at large, but bad news for professional forecasters. BLS revisions have a direct impact on "what our model would have said given this new information". Our forecast for November, given the revised data in this month's report, would have been a drop of 79,000 nonfarm workers instead of a drop of 155,000.

Most forecasting models will include lagged values of the dependent variable, in addition to any proprietary or public information forecasters have access to. WANTED's forecasting model, for example, includes Nonfarm Employment, Unemployment Insurance Claims, and our Hiring Demand Indicators (number of new online job ads posted on the internet).

The table below shows the information available at the time of our forecast, the information available in the most recent Employment Situation Summary, and our forecasts based on those two different sets of data: