Online Job Numbers Signal Hiring Bounce for Some

The Conference Board reported this past week that there were 3,294,800 online job postings in June on more than 1,200 major Internet job boards.

The postings between January and May signal an improvement from the decline of 1.2 million postings between August 2008 and January 2009.

"Job demand has definitely stabilized since January," said Gad Levanon, from The Conference Board. "Although there is some bounce in the monthly numbers, the number of online advertised vacancies has held steady in the last three months."

Renee Fulton, from the staffing firm Talis Group, said employers these days are looking to hire — and to hire quickly.

She believes that companies needed the help long before now, but they had stopped job orders because of uncertainty in the economy.

As a result, business was slow from November to March.

But her outlook for the rest of 2009 is much more positive.

Recent activity, particularly the placement of engineers in the manufacturing sector, has picked up. Last month the number of job orders for her firm was level with the same time frame last year. She said June 2008 was a very strong month.

Comments

[Moon Kil Woong:]

Yes Summer is historically strong for jobs, that's why the falloff of jobs was so shocking.

Anyways, I will tend to look at statistics more than talking heads saying everything is cheery and all. A rise in online job postings may merely be due to the fact that companies have looked for a cheaper way to hire and/or have fired their human resources. A lot has changed in regards to how business is done. The cheaper more efficient ways are being adopted more readily than before. This is what pulls us out of a recession, not tons of useless government spending.

Jul 06 04:50 AM

[Brian Bober:]

Thanks for the good news, but isn't Moon Kil right and this is just the continuing migration of HR functions online?

Jul 06 06:49 PM

[Old Trader:]

Hmmm..the information you present seems to be somewhat contrary to what appeared in an FT article on July 3, citing slumping employment in the temp sector. If, as Ms. Fulton says, companies have been needing help for some time, but have been holding off, I'd think the temp sector would reflect this. Perhaps its just engineers that are in demand....

Jul 06 08:50 PM