Good News! Job Postings Rise as Market Surges on Better Than Expected News

From ERE Exchange: by John Zappe Jun 1, 2009, 1:55 pm ET

There's good news on this, the first day of June. The Conference Board reports
this morning that online job postings rose last month by the largest
amount in more than two years. It's the first increase in the
Help-Wanted Online Data Series in six months.

In
May, there were 250,000 more jobs posted online than in April. The 8
percent increase brought the number of advertised jobs online to
3,367,000. Though modest, the increase dwarfs the 21,000 job posting
gain The Conference Board reported in October 2008.

"The May bounce in labor demand is a very welcome sign," said Gad
Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. "Labor demand
typically leads the trend in both employment and unemployment, so
positive signals on labor demand are always important."

While some of The Conference Board's four U.S. regions showed more
improvement than others, all had more online jobs advertised in May
than in April. This extended to the state level where 43 states had
more jobs.

With every silver lining there comes the dark cloud. Even with the
increase, the number of online vacancies is 1,152,000, or 25 percent,
below last year's advertised openings. Overall in the U.S., as of April
there were 4.4 unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy,
according to The Conference Board.

That picture will undoubtedly change Friday when the Bureau of Labor
Statistics releases its monthly employment report for May. Wanted
Technologies, which gathers the data for The Conference Board's Help
Wanted Index, predicts the BLS will report
the U.S. economy gave up 565,000 jobs in the month, a number that is
about 6.6 percent higher than what the company says is the consensus of
economists.

Economic predicting, however, is a dicey business, bearing more than
a passing resemblance to crystal-ball gazing. Besides The Conference
Board's upbeat report this morning, other reports
from the Institute of Supply Management and the government showed
declines in certain watched indicators, but because they were less than
expected, stock prices are up by triple digits.

The ISM reported that manufacturing continued to shrink during May,
but by at a rate less than in prior months. A construction report from
the government showed spending in April rose for the second month in a
row. The increase was the largest in eight months. And, though consumer
spending fell in April, the decline was less than had been predicted.

Recruiters are also feeling more confident that we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. ExecuNet's Recruiter Confidence Index,
released today, surged 16 points during May. It was the the third
increase in as many months. The index surveys executive search
recruiters who are part of the ExecuNet network on their expectations
for increases in search assignments.

Of the 143 executive recruiters surveyed, 57 percent are confident
or very confident the executive employment market will improve in the
next six months; 67 percent of the survey respondents expect at least a
10 percent increase in corporate search assignments.