US Online Job Market grows 1.0% in January 2012

Entering a new cycle, labor demand in January improved slightly (up 1.0%) compared to December. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics employers added 853,000 jobs to their payrolls in the second half of 2011. During this time online labor demand declined steadily suggesting that open positions were being closed due to the hires but not replaced with additional needs. With January showing already some improvement we expect labor demand to grow over the next months and hopefully exceed last year's result. At this time labor demand has reached 61% of it's peak in August 2007.

United States Job Openings (Online Postings)
January 2007 - January 2012

Employers closed obsolete job openings during the first week of January and began to replace them with new postings. The rate of growth of new job opportunities was stronger in January than the decline at the end of 2011.

United States Job Openings (Online Postings)
Weekly, 2011-2012

Note: A weekly update on the United States Job Openings (Online Postings) is available on this blog every Tuesday.

Legend for week-over-week change of labor demand:

flat	0%
slow	0.1% – 0.5%
moderate	0.6% – 1.5%
fast	> 1.5%

Methodology: SkillPROOF surveys the inventories of job openings at direct employers. Job openings are counted and verified every 24 hours. All data sources have been verified for timely removal of filled or closed positions. No data from job boards or search firms is included.

For this report SkillPROOF estimates the counts of job openings. Estimates are calculated directly from SkillPROOF’s actual daily counts of job openings. As part of its calculations, SkillPROOF uses data and findings from reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (http://www.bls.gov).

Comment by Henning Seip on February 1, 2012 at 9:05am: ADP reports: Employment in the U.S. nonfarm private business sector increased by 170,000 from December to January on a seasonally adjusted basis. More: www.adpemploymentreport.com.

Comment by Henning Seip on February 3, 2012 at 8:45am

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January, and the unemployment rate decreased to 8.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. More: www.bls.gov

Comment by Henning Seip on February 14, 2012 at 9:03am: Update: US Online Job Market, February Week 2: Up 0.7%. More: http://www.skillproof.com/?p=2129

Comment by Henning Seip on February 21, 2012 at 7:56am: Update: US Online Job Market, February 2012, Week 3: Up 1.4%. More: http://www.skillproof.com/?p=2137

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