Unemployment Low, Job Website Traffic High

Unemployment levels may be low, but the number of U.S visitors to online employment websites could be set to rise.

by Helen Leggatt

The number of people visiting employment websites rose by 31 percent in the first week of 2007 compared with the same week a year ago. Figures recently released by Hitwise show that CareerBuilder.com leads the employment category top ten with 13.7 percent of all U.S. visits, followed by Monster.com (11.5 percent) and third was Yahoo’s Hot Jobs (5.3 percent).

Hewitt Associates was tenth with 1.2 percent.

Jennifer Sullivan, a spokesperson for CareerBuilder.com, told The E-Commmerce Times that the increase in traffic wasn’t unusual. "Typically, you're always going to see an increase in January," said Sullivan. "It is one of the busiest job-search months of the year, as people put their New Year's resolutions into action.”

With only 34 percent of American jobseekers currently using the internet to source career opportunities there are an awful lot more out there who have yet to find the growing online job goldmine.

Borrell Associates found in their report "2007 Outlook: Online Recruitment Advertising", that internet jobsites could be in for more increases in traffic as the year progresses.

The report's executive summary concludes “Job boards are quickly moving downstream - away from their executive-level and managerial roots and toward what could be a more massive pot of gold: helping local small- and medium-sized businesses use the Internet to locate hourly and part-time clerks, cashiers, forklift operators, restaurant workers, drywall installers, and administrative assistants.”