Encouraging News from Monster Employment Index

I missed this report earlier in the month. The Monster Employment Index gave us some encouraging news on U.S. employment activity.... another positive bounce.

The Index is a broad monthly analysis of U.S. online job demand conducted
by Monster (MWW)- the online job bulletin board. The index is based on a real-time view of millions of employer job opportunities from a large, representative selection of online career outlets nationwide. (Remember our calculations of over 700,000 Fortune-1000 jobs available at the end of Jan?)

The Monster index bounced up in Feb for the first time since last October.
(click chart to enlarge)

Source: Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: MWW)

Other highlights from the report:

• Occupations in Business and Financial Operations witnessed gains.

• All geographic regions exhibited increased recruitment activity in February,
except the Pacific region which remained flat

• Online demand for workers grew in 25 of the 28 major metro markets, led by
Pittsburgh and Houston

This report is consistent with what we are also seeing in the government data. Initial claims for the March 14 week did fall back 12,000. Total claims remained high, but a leading indicator of recovery is when these initial claims totals continue to fall consistently.

Given the fact that the Feb Monster data is more dynamic, look for initial claims to fall again when the claims data is released later this week. (Also remember that we saw corporate layoffs curbed significantly in February) . Although initial claims are likely to begin falling from here, unemployment may continue to rise for a time. It is however the initial claims falling that indicates that recovery is near.

Interestingly, the consensus among the majority of experts is that claims will rise. So look for a headline something like "initial claims for unemployment unexpectedly fall..." later this week.

Comments

[Dave Wrixon:]

More evidence that the US economy is based largely on imports.

In this case it would seem mainly from Colombia.


On Mar 25 05:38 AM Cetin Hakimoglu wrote:

> Futures are surging so we're set up for another big rally today.
> Within 6-9 months all econ numbers will validate this recovery, and
> it's off to the races. We should see 5-7 years at least of perpetual,
> modest economic growth on tame inflation and easy credit. It will
> be like the 2002-2007 bull market.

Mar 25 06:15 AM

[Bjarne Jensen:]

It's important to remember that the 2002-2007 rally is referred to as "the Jobless Recovery".

Mar 25 02:56 PM