Simply Hired Releases Q1 2009 Job Trends

Data from Largest Job Search Engine Reflects Job Trends by Geography, Industry and

Demand among Job Seekers; Based on More Than Nine Million Job Listings

Simply Hired, the largest job search engine and recruitment advertising network, today released a trend report on active job listings in Q1 2009. Aggregating job content from more than three million job listings per month from January 1 to March 31, 2009, Simply Hired outlined job trends by geography, industry and demand among job seekers.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment continued to decline sharply last month, with the nationwide unemployment rate rising from 8.1 to 8.5 percent. This means that an increasing number of job seekers are looking for a limited number of positions. Simply Hired's Q1 2009 report reveals that:

- A growing number of job seekers are looking for work in places such as Chicago (job seekers up 15 percent), San Francisco and the Bay Area (job seekers up 15 percent), Boston (job seekers up 17 percent), Milwaukee and Washington D.C.

- Today, the most competitive job listings are for positions related to project management, graphic design, financial analysis, staff accounting and business analysis; the least competitive jobs are for sales associates, sales representatives and dental assistants.

Simply Hired is seeing some very encouraging trends among our active job listings, including an uptick in finance and accounting jobs, said Gautam Godhwani, CEO, Simply Hired. Because factors such as the recent tax season may have contributed to the five percent increase in accountant positions, Simply Hired plans to track this information in the Q2 2009 job trends report where we'll further examine active job listings and some of the environmental factors that may have caused them.

Simply Hired also found that the top active job listings included keywords such as part-time, sales, accounting or finance. Available jobs in Washington D.C. were up by 14 percent, with a smaller, yet still positive five percent upswing of available jobs in Boston and San Diego. Among the active jobs in these areas were health diagnosis and treatment practitioners, sales representatives and engineers. Truck driver, sales representative and business analyst jobs became more available -- as denoted by an increase in related listings by 45 percent, 12 percent and eight percent, respectively -- to job seekers, while cashier and administrative assistant jobs dwindled, marked by a corresponding five percent and three percent drop in listings.