Sales Occupations – Jobs. Trends. Insight.

Sales Jobs Growing 4.3% a Month – 15 Times Faster than before Recession

By Charles Thibault on November 11, 2009 in Sales.

Hiring Demand for Sales & Related Occupations has been growing 4.3% a month since February, according to data from WANTED Analytics. WANTED Analytics tracks the number of online job ads on over 1,000 employment websites.

This positive trend has affected most metropolitan areas and detailed occupations in the Sales category (BLS Standard Occupation Major Group 410000).

The "normal" monthly growth rate experienced during the 2006/2007/2008 pre-recession period was only 0.3%. In other words, Hiring Demand is growing at almost 15 times the rate it did during normal economic times. Most of this can be attributed to "catching up", however – about 950,000 people lost their jobs in the Retail Industry for example, a 6% drop in employment. There are still 30,000 fewer Sales job ads now than there were 2 years ago (136,000 in October compared to 169,000 in November 2007).

The following table and graph detail Hiring Demand trends over the past four years. The natural log of the number of online job ads is used to facilitate trending analysis

Period	"Sales Jobs, Monthly Growth Rate"
OCT 2006 – MAY 2008	+0.3%
JUNE 2008 – JAN 2009	-5.2%
FEB 2009 – Current	+4.3%

Source: WANTED Analytics

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.

Weekly Advertiser Watch

By Charles Thibault on July 17, 2009 in Employer Watch.

In our weekly feature, we detail job postings at the individual company level. Every week, WANTED produces a 'Gazelles' Report, which is meant to detect companies who's Hiring Demand has spiked.

Radio One (NASDAQ:ROIA) was a top gainer on July 17th. Radio One has appeared in three consecutive weekly Gazelles Reports. Its Hiring Demand for advertising, marketing, or sales related occupations marks strong growth in its core business.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

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

Weekly Advertiser Watch: AT & T; Oshkosh Corporation; MarineMax; Starwood Hotels & Resorts; Dollar General

By Charles Thibault on July 6, 2009 in Employer Watch.

In our weekly feature, we discuss Hiring Demand at the company level. WANTED's weekly Gazelles Report details advertisers whose online recruitment activity has shown significant upward trending in the past 28 days.

AT&T (NYSE: T) has appeared in our weekly Gazelles report for the past three weeks. Spikes in Hiring Demand for AT&T have mostly been concentrated in Sales occupations – it has more than doubled the number of new job ads placed on a weekly basis, moving from an average 2,700 job postings to 6,000 last week.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0