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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.

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

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.

June '09 Hiring Demand Outlook: Slippage, but Poised for Upward Trending

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

May '09 Hiring Demand Trend: Flat and Still Well Below Prior Year

By Charles Thibault on June 9, 2009 in Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand has stabilized in the United States, and year-over-year drops in Hiring Demand are shrinking, based on data reported by WANTED Analytics.

In April, US Hiring Demand was down 32.6% compared to the same period a year ago. As of May, Hiring Demand was down only 28.4% , an improvement of 4.2%.

Overall, the trend in Hiring Demand is flat, after a significant downward trend in the second half of 2008. The following time-series graph, showing the number of weekly new ads is fitted with log-linear time trends. The pattern of job ad volume since January has been essentially flat.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

In May, 19 of the 22 major occupational groups have shown relative improvements in hiring demand compared to April.

Computer and Mathematical Occupations, down 40% last month compared to a year ago, are down only 30% this month, an improvement of 10%.
Management Occupations, down 37.4% last month, are down 27.5% this month, an improvement of 9.9%.
Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations, down 27.6% last month, are down 19.2% this month, an improvement of 8.4%.
The only occupations to show growth on a year-over-year basis are Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations.

Click chart to view full size

WANTED Hiring Demand Indicators – All Occupations, March '09

By Juli Morris and Charles Thibault on April 22, 2009 in Hiring Demand Indicators.

WANTED's Hiring Demand Indicators confirms what most people already feel about the US economy–no one has been spared. According to our data, all occupations lost ground between March 2008 and March 2009, measured year-over-year.

Click chart to view full size

Hiring demand in health care, which is generally thought to be an acyclical industry, has shown contraction. However, the two broad health care occupational categories hold two of the top three "least worst" year-over-year performances, supporting the hypothesis that health care, if not completely acyclical, is at least one of the industries most resistent to recessions. Indeed, whereas total US non-farm employment has shrunk by 4.8 million workers in the past year, the health care industry has added 325,000 workers in the past year. Since hiring demand has been negative since October 2008, it may only be a matter of time before the health care industry also experiences a contraction in overall employment.
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