Bank of America – Jobs. Trends. Insight.

Hiring Demand Down 11% in June at Largest Financial Firms

By Juli Morris on July 21, 2009 in Business/Finance.

We reported last month that Hiring Demand at the ten major financial institutions repaying TARP funds was on the rise this Spring, with online job ads for these firms up 46 percent in May compared to February 2009, their first quarter low. These financial firms were granted permission by the Treasury in early June to begin repaying government-bailout funds received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Hiring Demand at the same ten financial firms declined 11 percent in June from its May level, remaining 35 percent higher than the February low.

Despite recent positive news in the sector, such as robust earnings reports from JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, as well as from firms like Bank of America and Citigroup, the sector faces continuing difficulties in the second half of 2009. Losses by regional banks on commercial real estate loans are expected to top $30 billion in 2009, and 57 have already failed this year.

Online job ads posted by J.P. Morgan Chase constitute 60 percent of the total number of new ads in June, with the largest concentration of job ads falling under the following categories: Tellers; Sales Agents, Financial Services; Financial Managers, Branch or Department; Personal Financial Advisers; Loan Officers; and Computer Specialists.

The ten financial institutions granted permission to begin repaying TARP funds are: J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp and BB&T Corp., American Express Co., Capital One Financial Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., State Street Corp. and Northern Trust Corp.

Fortune 1000 Hiring Demand Remains Flat

By Charles Thibault on July 20, 2009 in Fortune 1000.

Hiring Demand by Fortune 1000 companies remained consistent with the prior month, according to data from WANTED's Fortune 1000 report. WANTED's report measures new job ads for America's largest corporations. A month ago, the Fortune 1000 showed a year-over-year drop of 24.6% in Hiring Demand.

247 of the 1000 largest US corporations showed improvements in Hiring Demand, unchanged since last month.

On a Sector basis:

- Hiring Demand of "Wholesale Trade" companies (NAICS 42) is up by thirty-seven percentage points, posting a 24% year-over-year increase compared to last month's year-over-year drop of 13.2%.

- Health Care is the only sector to show consistent and robust growth in Hiring Demand. Health Care sector Hiring Demand is up 26.8% compared to last year. Last month, Hiring Demand was up 34.6% on a year-over-year basis.

- Hiring Demand of "Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services" companies (NAICS 54) dropped by twenty percentage points, going from -13.2% to -33.9% on a year-over-year basis.

The following table summarizes the sector highlights:

Source: WANTED Fortune 1000 Report

Weekly Advertiser Watch: Bank of America; JP Morgan Chase; General Dynamics; Oshkosh Corporation

By Charles Thibault on July 10, 2009 in Employer Watch.

In our weekly Advertiser Watch feature, we detail Hiring Demand at the individual company level. Advertiser Watch is triggered by WANTED's Gazelles Report, which detects businesses with upward trends in Hiring Demand. This week, we focus on companies that have previously appeared in this feature, and are also present in this week's Gazelles Report.

Financials have been doing quite well recently – the S&P 500 Financial Sector Index is up 82% since March 6, 2009. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) has shown an almost fourfold increase in its stock price since the same date. Bank of America has consistently popped up on our weekly Gazelles report, even though Hiring Demand has dropped off a little since last month, possibly signaling the end of bull rally around this stock. Most of Bank of America's Hiring Demand growth has been in core occupations: demand for Tellers, Loan Officers, and Financial Managers has shown steady progression since January 2009.

Return to Normalcy: Bank of America (BAC) Hiring Demand Rebounds Sharply

By Bruce Murray on June 17, 2009 in Business/Finance, Employer Watch.

Bank of America's (BAC) Hiring Demand dropped sharply–along with that of other banks–during the unfolding financial meltdown last fall.

During that chaotic period BAC acquired Merrill Lynch and then apparently attempted to get out of the deal in a process that prompted a Congressional committee hearing last week. Along the way, it received $52.5 billion in TARP funds, the largest amount of any bank on the list of 615 institutions receving bail-out funds. Then this week, it was not among the 10 banks repaying $66.3 billion in TARP funds.

Bank of America Monthly Hiring Demand Rebounds

Nonetheless, it appears that the underlying business operations of the organization have returned to a level of normalcy when measured by the level of Hiring Demand. The chart to the left shows how the volume of job ads placed by BAC establishments fell by 75 percent from a peak of 24,618 in October, 2008 to just under 6,000 in January, 2009.

In May, BAC level of Hiring Demand has returned to almost 23,000 job ads, an apparent sign that BAC management believes the worst is over.

Meanwhile, today the Obama Administration announced a proposed overhaul of the regulations covering the financial sector. The debate has begun over whether these regulations have gone far enough to limit the size of financial institutions which became too big to fail.

Advertiser Watch: General Dynamics; Bank of America; Avon Products; Dr.Pepper Snapple Group; US Army

By Charles Thibault on June 3, 2009 in Employer Watch.

Several companies are expanding their workforce, despite the ongoing recession. In a weekly feature, we discuss five companies whose recent online job advertising has spiked, courtesy of the WANTED Gazelles™ report, which uses proprietary data mining algorithms to detect sudden shifts in online recruitment advertising.

General Dynamics (NYSE: GD) has increased its number of IT job postings by 63% in the past month. It posted over 3,900 new IT job ads in April, compared to 2,500 for March. General Dynamics has continued strong activity over the past three weeks as well, posting 2,200 jobs just last week. This uptick in IT job listings is also supported by increases in both the number of Management and Engineering job listings, although the volume for these two occupations is in the 700 range. Most of the jobs are located in the Washington, DC area, and most General Dynamics job postings have recently been seen on CareerJournal and JobServe. General Dynamics stock is up 70% since the 52 week low in early March of this year.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0