Monday, June 06, 2011

Monster Index Shows Escalation of Recruitment Activity Overall, Public-Sector Job Demand Lags

The Monster Employment Index for the U.S. was released today, and showed a positive annual gain of 7% in May, marking the 16th straight month of a year-over-year gain for online job demand. Other highlights include:

1. 14 of the 20 industries monitored by the Index showed positive annual growth trends, with the strongest gains in mining/oil and gas extraction (+62%, the "drill, drill, drill" effect), utilities (+35%), wholesale trade (+17%), and retail trade (+15%).  The weakest industry was public administration, which had a -18% decline in online job demand.  

2. 27 of the 28 metro markets recorded positive annual online job demand growth in May. Detroit (+38%) had the highest gain in May, followed by Cleveland, Minneapolis and Cincinnati (+27% for all three) and Chicago (+24%).  Washington, D.C. (-2%) continued to be the only market to decline on an annual basis, driven by weakness in public sector hiring.

Jesse Harriott, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at Monster Worldwide commented “There has been considerable escalation in recruitment activity during 2011 with online job demand reaching the highest reading for the month of May in the index since 2008. We are currently seeing growth in private sector recruitment, with demand for professionals in healthcare, social services and business-related occupations rising; however government-related recruitment continues to lag.”

MP: The ongoing improvements in online job demand, especially for the private sector in 27 out of 28 metro markets, is consistent with my recent reports on private sector job gains (see here and here).  And the decline in advertised openings for public administration positions, and the overall weakness for job demand in the DC metro area is consistent with the job losses in the public sector documented in the two posts above. 

Posted 4:24 PM Post Link 4 Comments

4 Comments:

At 6/06/2011 9:20 PM, Blogger Hans said...

So why has their common stocks collapsed?

 
At 6/06/2011 10:50 PM, Blogger Mark Holder said...

Interesting that Detroit is seeing such a huge increase with the drop in auto work in April and May. Have you done any work on the impact from the auto sector on the jobs reports? Saw that Joe Lavorgna had some data suggesting the impact was much greater than expected.

 
At 6/07/2011 7:54 AM, Blogger morganovich said...

and yet were seeing very little actual hiring.

i'd love to see the aging of these ads (how long they have been up) and a position filled rate.

i suspect this may be more indicative of a skills mismatch that a large amount of job creation.

this is a fundamental issue with this index.

it's based on job ads, not hires.

so, it will actually look better in an environment in which there is a skills mismatch - lots of ads will stay up for unfilled positions.

if actual hiring were going on, the number would drop as ads got taken down when they were filled.

 
At 6/07/2011 10:50 AM, Blogger Buddy R Pacifico said...

Very positive that wholesale and retail have mid-teen increases in job openings. Retail especially, is the most sensitive in reacting to the overall economy.

 

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