By Charles Thibault on July 8, 2009 in Hiring Demand Indicators.

Last month we reported that National Hiring Demand was improving in relative terms – year-over-year percent changes improved from -32.6% in April 2009 to -28.4% in May of 2009. Hiring Demand has slipped slightly since last month, with year-over-year percentage changes moving from -27.2% in May to -30.1% in June. (Slight revisions to data cause minor variations in Hiring Demand percent changes when compared to previously published results).

This month's slippage is particularly due to a robust month of May – on a seasonally adjusted basis May's Hiring Demand was up 10% compared to April. Because of May's increase in Hiring Demand, in combination with improving month-over-month declines in Nonfarm Payroll Employment (the revised drop for May was -322,000, whereas April's final number was -519,000), WANTED had forecast an optimistic drop of 260,000 in Nonfarm Payroll Employment. Despite the slight slippage this month, Hiring Demand has moved from "being flat" to starting to show signs of a possible uptrend.

The two time-series charts of new online job ads, one weekly series and one monthly series, show that since the drop off in December, Hiring Demand has been slowly inching up.  (Usually the series "bounces back" in January, but, given the recession, new job ads did not come back to the previous calendar year's level.)  This corresponds to slightly improving UI claims data and slowing in the month-over-month drops in US Employment.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

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