According to the job bank CareerCast.com, job hiring in February 2010 showed the most promise since July 2009, while improving considerably from a year ago.
Each month CareerCast measures current hiring trends against the base year of 2007, using online job listings at select major job banks and job aggregators (job search engines) to calculate index scores consisting of points.
As you likely know, 2007 was the year in which the current “Great Recession” began ramping up, spawning whopping record-level mass layoffs and the highest unemployment rate (10.1%) in 26 years.
The hiring index score for managerial jobs in February 2010 was 83.3, a 12.5 point increase over January’s score of 70.8 and, easier to understand, close to a 69 percent improvement over February 2009. February 2010 was the best month for job hiring since July 2009 when the index score was 78.2, an increase of 17.8 points over June’s score of 60.4.
To put in CareerCast’s words, “February’s index score of 83.3 means that the volume of available managerial jobs across the U.S. has now returned to a level not seen 17 months. This is still nearly 24% below 2008 levels, but considering that February 2008 represented one of the best hiring months in the past three years, it is still an impressive performance.”
To put it another way, employers increasing hiring for managerial jobs might be a sign that they are gearing up to hire more worker bees to report to those who are filling the managerial positions. However, “given that the volume of managerial job openings across the U.S. is still nearly 17% below 2007 levels, a return to full employment is still a long way off” according to CareerCast.
CareerCast also produced a hiring-trend report for February 2010 entitled “Best and Worst Cities to Find a Job”. The five best cities for jobs in February were:
- Washington, D.C.
- Boston, MA
- San Francisco, CA
- Seattle, WA
- Baltimore, MD
The five worst cities for jobs in February were:
- Riverside, CA
- Detroit, MI
- Memphis, TN
- Tampa, FL
- Louisville, KY
Additionally, CareerCast ranked hiring for managerial jobs by job level. See Hiring Trends at CareerCast.com for more details, including more best and worst cities for jobs in February 2010. Because the job-hiring reports are updated monthly, those for February 2010 might no longer be available by the time you get there.
On a related matter, Best Companies to Work for at our partner site might interest you.
