WANTED Estimates Decline of 660,000 Jobs in Upcoming January '09 BLS Employment Report

WANTED Technologies, the leading source of insight and analysis based on hiring demand, today released its estimate of the upcoming BLS Employment figures for January 2009. Using hiring demand data gathered on a weekly basis from online job boards, WANTED is forecasting the continued decline in seasonally adjusted U.S. non-farm employment, with a projected month-over-month loss in January 2009 of 660,000 jobs.

The data we have been collecting correlates closely with other measures of the state of the economy, said Bruce Murray, President and CEO of WANTED. Unfortunately, we do not see any turnaround in the employment picture yet.

WANTED supplies its data to The Conference Board, which relies on it to produce its monthly Help-Wanted OnLine Data Seriesô.

WANTED's estimate is based on a model that incorporates its own hiring demand data with that of government agencies and other leading researchers. WANTED analyzes more than six million job listings per weekógiving it an extraordinary amount of information about what isóand is notóhappening in the employment market. Over the past five months, when the demand for labor dropped precipitously in the wake of the financial crisis, WANTEDís model was able to anticipate the employment losses more accurately than other consensus estimates released prior to the BLS figures.


ìAt this point, the issue is not whether we are in a recession, but when we will see indications that we are coming out of that recession,î said Murray. ìWe believe our Hiring Demand Indicators will be a valuable resource in identifying the early signs of a recovery.î

WANTED data shows that hiring demand peaked in 2007 prior to the officially designated onset of the recession in late 2007. The data shows a modest contraction in demand in the first half of 2008, with a rapidly accelerating contraction in late 2008.

On an industry-specific basis, certain industriesósuch as Financial Servicesóclearly experienced a very sharp reduction in demand in the second quarter of 2008, when the first signs of turmoil among larger banks began to surface.