The Board’s Employment Trends Index rose for the second consecutive month in October, and is now at 89.3, up 0.7 percent from the revised September figure. It’s still down significantly from a year ago, when the index was 104.5.

The improvement, said Conference Board senior economist Gad Levanon, foreshadows an end to job loss, but not an immediate, strong, uptick in hiring.

“The Employment Trends Index has likely turned a corner in September, and the historical relationship between the index and employment suggests that job losses will end in early 2010,” said Levanon. “While layoffs have certainly declined in recent months, we still expect to see employers adding hours to their existing workforce before hiring will strongly increase.”

Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which issued its October jobs report on Friday, show little change in workers’ hours over the past several months. Since June, the average number of hours worked weekly in the private sector has been steady at 33. In the manufacturing sector, weekly hours have ticked up by 30 minutes since June and now stand at 40 hours a week on average, with 3.2 hours of overtime work weekly, an improvement over June’s 2.8 hours.

Surveys of economists had predicted the numbers would be closer to 150,000 to 175,000 lost jobs and an unemployment rate of 9.9 percent. The spike pushed the unemployment rate to its highest point since April 1983 and the job loss was the 22nd consecutive month of declines.

The largest losses were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade. The three sectors and finance are responsible for the biggest share of job losses since the recession officially began in December 2007. Construction alone has lost 1.6 million jobs. Manufacturing has lost 2.1 million.

The rate of job losses is well off its highs from earlier this year, some of it due to government stimulus efforts. But the numbers still portend a slow recovery for the labor market.

With the latest numbers, the government says 15.7 million are unemployed. An additional 11.7 million people are working part time because they can’t find full-time jobs or had given up searching for at least the four weeks before the survey period.

Unemployment, however, is not evenly spread across the labor force. It’s worst for teenagers who are part of the labor force, at 27.6 percent, and lowest — 4.7 percent — for those 25 and older with at least a four-year college degree.

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Other indices, including the Monster Employment Index, showed little movement. Consumer Confidence, which had improved in the last few months, declined, as did the number of new jobs posted online.

In Canada, the jobless rate hit 8.6 percent as employers there cut 43,000, surprising labor market forecasters who were expecting a gain of 10,000 jobs.

Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto, told Bloomberg.com, that the report was a “big disappointment.” “Our economy seems to be struggling out of the recession and the weak employment just fits into that trend.”

Another economist, speaking about the U.S. job outlook, but who could just as well have been talking about Canada, too, told BusinessWeek: “This recovery is shaping up to be a jobless one, just like the last two.”

Added Paul Ashworth, an economist with Capital Economics in Ontario, “Our concern is that, unlike the last recovery, with credit still tight, households aren’t going to be able to smooth their consumption using credit until the labor market eventually strengthens.”

The Conference Board’s monthly Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series reported that online job postings dropped by 83,000 in October. The number of newly posted jobs dropped by 24,000.

“The September and October numbers are a further indication that, thus far, the recovery is weak,” says Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. “Labor demand is a leading indicator of employment, and the numbers indicate that employment is not likely to rise for the rest of this year.”

That’s bad news for the nation’s 15 million unemployed workers, whose numbers are only expected to swell when the official government report for October is released Friday. One survey of labor economists predicts the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will report that 175,000 jobs disappeared during the month. Another survey predicts the number will be closer to 150,000. Either way, the unemployment rate, 9.8 percent in September, is also expected to rise.

Only a few days old and the beginning of the seasonal hiring slowdown anyway, November is starting off with news of a layoff of 8,000 workers by Johnson & Johnson. The pharmaceutical company said its layoff of between 6 and 7 percent of its global workforce will save it $800-$900 million.

Despite some positive manufacturing and economic news in the last several days, workers are still struggling to find work.

A report from job board operator Beyond.com says 47 percent of the job seekers to its 15,000+ websites reported being recently laid off. Another 22 percent said they are looking because they are unsatisfied or insecure in their current job.

Of the job seekers responding to the quarterly survey on the Beyond.com network, 7.7 percent said they have been looking for a year or more. That’s a 20 percent increase from the previous quarter (April-June 2009) when 6.43 percent reported their job search was taking longer than a year.

The Beyond.com report doesn’t provide numbers or a more detailed breakdown, so it’s not possible to say how many of those are unemployed. However, the BLS September report said that among the unemployed, 35.6 percent were out of work more than 27 weeks, about the time when unemployment benefits begin to run out.

On the Beyond.com network, two-thirds of the job seekers posting resumes had five or more years of experience. The biggest percentage jump in candidates from the second to the third quarters has been among those with 21 years or more experience, suggesting older workers are having a tougher time getting reemployed. No surprise, at least on the Beyond network, where 76 percent of the job postings were for positions requiring less than a year experience. That’s up from the 55 percent recorded in the previous quarter.

Tomorrow, Monster releases its monthly employment index. It’s been stagnant since the beginning of the year, rising a little, then falling back. In September the index was at 119. In September of 2008 it was at 160.

To add to the doldrums, the Consumer Confidence Index released last week by The Conference Board for October was 47.7, down from September’s revised 53.4.

Let’s start with retention. Take the percentage of surveyed employers (26%) who now say they are “significantly more concerned” about retention of key employees than they were before the economic crisis hit and the percentage (39%) who are “slightly more concerned” — add them together, and you find that almost two-thirds are more concerned about top-talent retention than before.

On to salaries, benefits, hours, layoffs, and hours.

Salaries: Now, 54% of the companies that have made salary freezes are planning to restore them over the next six months, according to the Watson Wyatt survey of 201 large U.S. employers. That’s a big-time improvement. In August, 33 percent said they were going to unfreeze salaries. In June, 17 percent said they would.

Meanwhile, almost half of companies plan to reverse hiring freezes in the next six months.

Benefits: According to the survey, “of those reversing reductions to 401(k) matches, 70% will restore the match to its previous level.” Many of those reversals are planned for some time over the next year. On the other hand, the benefits news for employees is bad when it comes to healthcare. Watson Wyatt says that of the companies that have increased employees’ contributions to healthcare premiums, two out of three say those increases are here to stay.

Layoffs: More than one in five companies think they’re going to do layoffs during the rest of 2009 and 2010. At least that’s better than in April, when almost 50 percent said they were planning layoffs.

Worker hours: More than 80 percent of employers that instituted a reduced workweek expect to reinstate full weeks in the next 12 months. Most of those plan to bring back the hours over the next six months.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employers cut 263,000 jobs last month, a number 40-50 percent higher than economists expected. A Reuters poll predicted the non-farm payroll losses would be about 180,000 jobs, while a Bloomberg News estimate put the number closer to 1750,000 and one of the more optimistic estimates by MarketWatch expected a loss of 167,000 jobs.

The losses pushed the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent.

Among the biggest losers were construction jobs, down by 64,000 jobs; government, down by 53,000 jobs, and manufacturing, which lost another 51,000. The only significant gains came in healthcare, which added 19,000 jobs.

In more human terms, the BLS numbers mean that officially almost one in 10 American workers doesn’t have a job. But the numbers don’t include those who have given up looking for a job, those who didn’t actively seek work in the four weeks prior to the survey, and those who took part-time work because they couldn’t find anything.

In the parlance of the BLS, those are America’s discouraged workers and the marginally attached and the involuntarily part-time. Add them to the 15.1 million who are officially unemployed and the number is 26.5 million.

When you consider that the total workforce is 154 million, then the distressed workers represent 17 percent, or one in six.

Then there are the workers who the government no longer counts in any form. These are the people who had jobs, but don’t now and no longer consider themselves in the workforce.  In September, that percentage declined by .3 to 65.2, while the percentage of the total U.S. population that is employed — the so-called employment-population ratio — stands at 58.8, down almost 4 points since the start of the recession in December 2007.

Where have they gone? Those at retirement age may have retired; younger ones who would have taken jobs may now be opting to stay in school, join the military, or take volunteer assignments, while other workers have opted to return to school. Other data suggests, however, that it may be younger workers who are hardest hit. They have less seniority and fewer skills.

Numbers from the BLS and the Census Bureau show that older workers are opting to remain in the labor force longer.

What these data points mean for recruiters who are still recruiting is that the tsunami of inbound resumes and applications is only to going to get worse. Within each batch though you’ll find increasing numbers of skilled, older workers — the “over-qualified.” Don’t overlook them.

The “Talent Sourcing Forecast” survey from TalentDrive found, not surprisingly, that 51 percent of the surveyed companies said “filtering through the mass of resumes and increased number of applicants” was their No. 1 challenge. But, in those heaps and piles, reported 54 percent of the companies, were candidates who met or exceeded their expectations.

employment-population ratio

A Bloomberg survey also says economists expect the unemployment rate to rise to 9.8 percent, the highest since 1983. An ADP report released this morning foreshadows the lower, yet still continuing job loss. The ADP National Employment Report says the U.S. lost 254,000 private, nonfarm jobs in September, a drop of 23,000 from the revised August jobs report. It’s the lowest drop that ADP has recorded since August 2008.

Government economic reports released today showed the tentativeness of the U.S. recovery. A Commerce Department report said consumer spending in August was up 1.3 points, the biggest rise in eight years, and the fourth increase in a row. But fueled as it was by the Cash for Clunkers program, economists warn not to expect anything similar when the September results are reported at the end of this month.

Meanwhile, the Monster Employment Index, also released this morning, was down two points from September, while yet another report, this one from the Labor Department today, said 551,000 first-time claims for unemployment were filed last week, 17,000 more than the previous week and 20,000 more than the consensus of the 41 economists polled by Bloomberg.

Then there is the report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas which says fewer layoffs were announced in September than in any month since March 2008. The 66,404 layoffs tallied in the report are 10,000 fewer than in August and 30 percent lower than in September last year.

Today’s reports prompted the New York Times to start its story this way:

“A fusillade of economic reports released Thursday showed the economy’s rebound off the bottom seems to be leveling off, and that any recovery may come in fits and starts over the rest of the year.”

That seems to precisely describe what most of us have been sensing instinctively: Things may not be getting much worse, but they don’t seem to be getting better either.

In separate conversations with two attendees of this week’s HR Tech show in Chicago, both mentioned that they had been told by vendors who sell overseas and recruiters who work globally that Europe and Asia are recovering more rapidly than the U.S.

There’s a much greater hesitancy to commit (to purchases or hires) here than in the rest of the world, one of the two offered.

That feeling seems evident in the Consumer Confidence Index released by The Conference Board Tuesday. The Index was off by 1.3 points, a small decline, to be sure, but part of a pattern that began in May.

After rising almost 30 points between February and May, the Index has leveled off, hovering right around 50.0. The Index is a measure of how consumer confidence compares to 1985, when the Index was set to 100. So while confidence isn’t dropping much, it isn’t improving either.

Reporting the numbers, Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said, “While not as pessimistic as earlier this year, consumers remain quite apprehensive about the short-term outlook and their incomes. With the holiday season quickly approaching, this is not very encouraging news.”

An economist quoted in the Bloomberg story summed up conditions this way,

“The economy is on track for a jobless recovery, and unemployment will likely remain high well into next year,” said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. “We’re just not seeing a pickup in hiring. It means a long road to full recovery.”

The job posting data released today by The Conference Board suggests that the U.S. recovery is as tepid as economists fear.

“While the trend has been modestly upward and averaged 40,000 per month over the last five months, the labor market continues to have a hard time gaining momentum,” said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. “The Conference Board Employment Trends Index, which has been basically flat for three straight months, also helps highlight the difficulty the labor market is facing. With a growing consensus of a weak recovery, businesses seem to be slow to boost advertising for vacant or new positions.”

The Conference Board and its data partner, Wanted Technologies, survey some 1,200 online job boards counting all the unduplicated jobs and comparing them to the jobs listed the month before to come up with both a total online job count as well as a new job  count. For September there were 3.363 million jobs listed; 2.018 million were new.

Despite the drop, there were still 67,000 more jobs advertised online in September than two months earlier, thanks to a big jump in postings in August. The listings increased by 169,000 in August, the second biggest increase in the year. (In May, listings increased by 199,000.)

Regionally, there were more jobs advertised in the South than elsewhere in the nation. There 1.215 million jobs were online, a drop of 45,400.

As might be expected, healthcare job openings continued to outpace other occupations. In the Healthcare Practioner and Technical category, some 28,000 listings were added. Every other occupational category listed by The Conference Board saw a drop.

The Conference Board’s monthly Help-Wanted Online Data Series is the earliest of the monthly reports detailing the condition of employment in the U.S.  The Monster Employment Index will be released on Thursday and Friday the much-watched Employment Situation Summary (better known as the unemployment rate) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will be announced.

Below, Toole talks about these job-market trends, and the upcoming need for a lot of recruiters who have left the profession to come on back.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its August employment report this morning, putting the monthly job loss at 216,000. The average of guesses by economists surveyed by Bloomberg and Dow Jones was 230,000 to 233,000.

While the job loss is the lowest since August 2008, overall the economy has lost 6.9 million jobs since December 2007, the official start of the recession. This year alone the number of jobs lost tops 3.5 million.

The BLS numbers reflect the mixed messages the economy has been sending in the last few months. While job losses have declined significantly since the early part of the year, the ranks of the unemployed and the underemployed continues to grow. The BLS said the unemployed grew by 466,000 in August to 14.9 million. An additional 9.1 million people were involuntarily working part time because their hours had been cut or they couldn’t find full-time work. An additional 2.3 million people are out of work, but not counted as unemployed because they didn’t look for work during the four weeks preceding the government survey.

When those persons are included in the tally of the unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 16.8 percent.

The August job losses were generally across the board, with construction jobs taking the biggest hit dropping by 65,000. Close behind, though, was the 63,000 lost manufacturing jobs, with automotive responsible for nearly a fourth of the loss there.  The financial sector, which precipitated the recession, cut another 28,000 positions. Only healthcare had any appreciable gains, adding 28,000 jobs during the month, mostly in ambulatory care and in nursing and residential care.

Economists are expecting that Friday’s labor report will show the lowest job loss in a year even as the unemployment rate rises.

A Bloomberg survey of 79 economists pegs the August job loss at 230,000 and the unemployment rate at 9.5 percent for the month. The last time the U.S. economy lost that few jobs was August 2008 and the last time the economy actually created jobs was in January of 2008. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to release the August report tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. EDT.

An ADP report released Wednesday said private, nonfarm employment decreased by 298,000 jobs, which, the payroll management firm said, was the smallest decrease since September of last year.

ADP’s National Employment Report is considered a bell cow for the monthly BLS report, which is typically released a few days after. The BLS includes government jobs;  ADP does not.

The optimism in the economic predictions and the improvement suggested in the ADP report got additional support this morning when Monster Worldwide reported a jump in its monthly index. The index rose to 121 in August from 114 in July, its highest point since February. The 6 percent jump is also the highest monthly rate of increase since August 2005.

“The significant jump in the Monster Employment Index in August offers encouraging signs of improvement in the U.S. economy with the demand for managers and professionals as well as sales and office workers picking up in time for the fall hiring season,” said Jesse Harriott, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at Monster Worldwide.

Compiled from a survey of online job postings, the Monster Index showed job availability improved everywhere in the country, but especially in New England where the regional index climbed by 10 points. In terms of per capita online job availability, Alaska topped the nation, followed by Montana, Maryland, Virginia, and Massachusetts.

The industry sectors showing the biggest gain in online job postings were retail, up by 13 points; managerial positions, up by nine points; and arts, entertainment and recreation, starting from a very low 37 points, added seven, as did the utility sector, which now has an index of 105.

The Conference Board previously reported that Help Wanted Online Data Series showed a gain of 169,000 advertised vacancies in August, while the Board’s Consumer Confidence Index rose almost seven points over July and now stands at 54.1, the best its been since May.

The Conference Board, which issues some of the most watched economic indicators in the U.S., reported that consumer confidence jumped 14 percent between July and August. The Index, which hit a low of 26.9 in March, has more than doubled since then and now stands at 54.1. It’s still slightly below the 54.8 posted in May, but the rise was considerably greater than the 47.9 economists had expected, according to Bloomberg News.

Employers mirrored that confidence in a CareerBuilder / Robert Half survey that said 53 percent of businesses polled plan to hire full-time workers in 2010. The Employment Dynamics and Growth Expectations Report prepared by the two companies found 40 percent of employers planning to hire temporary or contract workers and 39 percent expecting to hire part-time workers.

The report, which has been issued annually for the last five years, found that the positions first to be filled will be in technology, customer service, and sales. Also on the list are positions in marketing/creative, business development, human resources, and accounting/finance.

Most the hires will be either entry-level (say 28 percent of the hiring managers surveyed) or staff-level professionals (32 percent). The traits most valued in a new hire? Employers cited multitasking, initiative, and creative problem-solving.

“Companies already are identifying the key skill sets they will need in new hires to take advantage of the opportunities presented by improving economic conditions,” said Max Messmer, chairman and CEO of Robert Half International. “Firms that cut staffing levels too deeply may need to do significant rebuilding once the recovery takes hold.”

Perhaps anticipating the recovery, perhaps because so many companies have already made cuts, employers are throttling back on layoffs, says outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“We see more and more signs that the economy is beginning to turn around. While it is too soon to expect a massive hiring binge that will move some of the nearly 20 million jobless Americans back onto payrolls, the pace of job cuts is likely to continue its downward trend,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

In January 241,749 job cuts were announced, the highest since January 2002, according to the firm, which has tracked planned layoff announcements daily since 1993. But the announced job cuts have been declining since.

The August numbers are still being counted, but the firm said it expects the four-month total from May through August to be significantly lower than the 711,100 it counted from January through April.

“Year-end job cuts are likely to increase from the levels recorded during the summer months, which typically see fewer job cuts, but we will probably not return to the levels reached between January and April,” says Challenger. “Job cuts are expected to continue the overall downward trend in 2010, when we might actually begin to see some small improvements in hiring.”

The Wall Street Journal reported this month in its Economic Forecasting Survey that economists expect, on average, the economy to lose just under 27,000 jobs a month next year. While not exactly a recovery, it’s a huge change from the 70,000 monthly job loss they predicted in July.

However, if you actually count the number of economists who predict that jobs will either not be lost or will actually be added, the number is slightly larger than those who predict continued job losses.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its employment report for August next week, Sept. 4th, just in time for the Labor Day weekend.

Instead of the 275,000 to 325,000 jobs that economists in two respected surveys thought were lost in July, the BLS said the number was closer to 247,000. The BLS report also put the July unemployment rate at 9.4 percent, a .1 drop from June. Economists had been expecting a rise to between 9.6 and 9.7 percent.

The drop in the unemployment rate was the first since April 2008 and the job loss was the smallest since August. The news sent stocks higher today. The Dow was up almost 136 points at midday.

While the numbers are welcome news to a recession-weary country, they are not evidence of a recovery. Job counts, layoffs, and hiring — cumulatively the employment situation — are all considered lagging indicators. In a slowing economy, companies take other steps to cut expenses before laying off workers. Likewise, when business begins to pick up, companies restore lost hours and pay overtime before making new hires, just in case the economic improvement is a blip, rather than a full-fledged trend.

There is tentative evidence in the BLS report that this is happening. The government said the average workweek for production and nonsupervisory workers was up .1 hours while the workweek for the manufacturing sector was up .3 hours. Factory jobs, which had been disappearing at a clip faster than most other sectors, were down by 52,000, the smallest decline in a year, and about half the 100,000 that had been expected. Since the recession began, 2 million factory jobs — the majority in automotive — have been lost.

Construction jobs also had a big decline, but the 76,000 lost jobs was less than the 117,000 that were lost on average each month from November through April.

However, there’s also plenty of evidence pointing to just how tentative and slight the improvement is. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index dropped in July for the second month in a row. It’s still above the recession bottom of 27.3 in February, but two months of declines suggests the public is not convinced a recovery is afoot.

The decline in the unemployment rate isn’t necessarily reflective of any significant pickup in unemployed workers finding jobs. The BLS report says 2.3 million Americans were marginally attached to the workforce, meaning they had looked for work in the past 12 months but aren’t counted as unemployed because they didn’t search for work in the four weeks prior to the BLS’s monthly survey.

If these workers, often called discouraged workers, and the workers who settled for part-time employment because they couldn’t find full-time jobs were added to the unemployment count, the rate would be 16.3 percent.

Both the Monster Index and The Conference Board’s Help Wanted Online Index offer little encouragement about the job situation. The Conference Board’s count of the number of jobs posted online was virtually unchanged from June, when 3.3 million job postings were counted. The Monster Index, meanwhile, was down to its lowest point since 2004. In both instances, the seasonal summer decline in job activity may be to blame.

“The decline in U.S. online recruitment activity at the beginning of the third quarter is likely due to a seasonal summer slowdown that is typical this time of year, with most industry and occupational categories experiencing reduced demand,” explains Jesse Harriott, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at Monster Worldwide. “Although the Index is down 27 percent year-on-year, an encouraging take-away and potential sign of stability is the fact that the Index is now showing its most moderate pace of annual contraction since February.”

Even the White House was cautious about today’s unemployment numbers. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “We are pleased, but not satisfied that the rate of that job loss is declining,” adding, “Without seeing some genuine, positive, sustained job growth, you’ll likely to see the rate continue to go up.”

Now follow along closely here, because this is one of those glass half-full stories where the fact that one report says 371,000 Americans lost their jobs in July and another reports a 31 percent jump in announced future job cuts is actually good news.

How’s that, you wonder?

In both instances the reports were better than they have been in months.

The job loss estimate is from ADP, the payroll company, which bases its count on the paychecks it handles for the non-farm private sector (that’s an important qualifier, since it doesn’t include government jobs). Compare the number of paychecks you cut from one month to the next, apply some statistical adjustments, and you get a number for the entire U.S. private, non-farm, workforce.

The ADP number, released today, is the lowest job loss since October, making it good news even though it was higher than the 350,000 economists expect according to a Bloomberg survey. But the stock market reacted sourly, closing down after four days of up closes, suggesting investors weren’t entirely sold on the bad-news-as-good-news concept.

That’s too bad, since the ADP estimate and the BLS numbers are rarely even close. Since January, ADP’s numbers have been higher than the official figure four times. There’s a good comparison chart on the Dallas News website showing the BLS private labor data compared to the ADP estimates.

A Dow Jones Newswires survey of economists pegs the government’s job loss at 275,000, while the unemployment rate will rise from 9.5 percent to 9.7 percent.

Now to the future jobs loss prediction from Challenger, Gray and Christmas. While it’s a little cheeky to ever call it good news when companies announce 97,373 job cuts, the number is lower than it was in July 2008 when 103,312 jobs were to be lost. It is also the second month in a row that the number was lower than for the same month the year before.

The bad news part of that is the number jumped by that 31 percent we mentioned at the beginning of the story. It was the first increase in announced job cuts since January.  (This is how bad news can be good news and bad news at the same time, which is where we could have left the matter, except for this observation directly from CEO John Challenger:

“While there are signs that the economy is stabilizing and the pace of layoffs slowing, we are still a long way from a full recovery. In fact, monthly job cuts are likely to return to levels in excess of 100,000 by the fourth quarter.”

As it happens, we were talking this morning with Jason Ferrara, VP of corporate marketing at CareerBuilder, about the employment outlook. He was about as cautious as a Federal Reserve chairman commenting on interest rates, but he did allow that companies seem to be planning for a hiring pickup.

CareerBuilder’s clients and others the company has talked to recently, are “looking toward stability in the job-loss numbers,” Ferrara told us. Meanwhile, they’re beginning to discuss building and enhancing their employment brands.

It’s certainly not a harbinger of an impending recovery, but Ferrara did mention it in the context of a question about what CareerBuilder is hearing these days. So it is at least a positive sign, not to mention a smart move since branding requires a sustained and integrated (what we used to call multimedia) effort.

Last week, both CareerBuilder and Monster reported declines in their North American revenue. Job postings and resume searching make up the bulk of that income, so with the economy in the tank and job creation in the negatives, it’s no surprise that job boards are down.

The Conference Board reported earlier this week that the number of jobs advertised online in July was all but unchanged from June. According to the report, prepared by Wanted Technologies, there were 3,295,500 jobs online during the month; 700 more than in June. The Conference Board noted that the number has been virtually unchanged since February. That would be the good news part.

The bad news part is that for every job opening online, there were more than four unemployed workers.

Friday’s BLS data release is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. EDT.

As a result, says CareerBuilder, 63 percent of the 55 and up group have applied for lower-level jobs, including entry-level positions and even internships.

That’s probably not much of a surprise to recruiters; 37 percent of them told CareerBuilder they have received applications for entry-level jobs from retirees and workers over 50.

What may well come as a surprise is the rise in older workers and the impact the recession is having on their ranks.

Layoffs and job losses have hit the younger workers hardest. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the 18 months since January 1, 2008, the number of workers in the 25-54 age group has declined by 5.1 million. For workers over 54 though, there are 624,000 more working. In fact, there were gains in the number of older employed workers in every age group the BLS tracks except one — 55-59 year olds who saw a modest decline of 79,000 in the 18 months.

Before you point out that the sheer number of older Americans has been rising, which is certainly true, consider for a moment the participation rate. Based on a monthly survey conducted by the U.S. Census for the BLS, the participation rate is independent of population size. It describes the percent of various population groups in the labor force.

The data shows that for the last 10 years, more and more older Americans are working. Since 1999, the percent of working Americans 55-64 has grown by 10 percent, while the over 64 age group has jumped — and that’s an apt word — by almost 40 percent. Contrast those changes to the 25-34 year olds who have declined from 84.6 in 1999 to 82.9 percent for the six months ending in June.

In the 61 years for which the BLS has data, this many older Americans have never been employed. In the mid-50s the percentage began to rise until 1967 when, at the peak, an average of 62.3 percent Americans aged 55-64 worked. The percentage began to decline until it bottomed in 1986 at 54 percent of the age group working. There it remained, rising modestly until the recession of the 90s when it started its upward climb.

Even more dramatic has been the number of those 65 and over reentering the workforce. For years, between 11 and 12 percent of retirement age Americans have worked. In 1998, on average, 11.9 percent of the 65 and over group worked. In June, it was 16.8 percent.

The explanation for the uptick in older Americans working is not too difficult to guess at: Longer life spans, better health, and access to health insurance whether private or through Medicare, the decline of the defined benefit pension coupled with the increase in the Social Security age, and, in the last two years, the recession, which has devastated many workers 401(k)s.

The implications, however, are harder to forsee, as is deciding if this is a structural change in the American labor force or a temporary economic blip. A BLS economist told me a colleague of his is researching these very questions.

Regardless of the cause of the return to work by older Americans, there’s no denying the graying of the workforce. For the first six months of this year workers 55 and over accounted for 21.8 percent of the labor force. That’s the highest percentage since 1971.

Meanwhile, the percentage of 25-34 year olds has taken a nose dive. From a high of 36.6 percent in 1986, the percentage has dropped 11.5 points to 25.1 percent for 2009. For the 25-54 year age group as a whole, there’s been a decline of almost eight points since 1993, when 86 percent of the workforce fell into that age group. For the first six months of 2009, 78.2 percent do.

Consider now the demographic factors we’ve detailed: an aging workforce, reentry into the workforce by workers who in years past would be retired, lower workforce participation by workers in the entry-level age group of 25-34, and, finally, the sheer reduction in employment by that age group caused by layoffs and other factors.

The implications of this are immense for employers and recruiters.

Among them is the increase they are seeing in mature workers seeking jobs. That 37 percent of recruiters who told CareerBuilder they’ve received applications from mature and retired workers for entry level jobs is, therefore, not that much of a surprise after all.

Even though the CareerBuilder survey says 65 percent of the employers report being willing to consider overqualified candidates, the reality is probably closer to the 44 percent of mature workers who say they’ve been told they are overqualified. Recruiters who reject overqualified mature workers may find it increasingly difficult to find the young workers who might otherwise take those jobs.

Should recovery from the recession prove to be as long as some economists are now fearing, retirements will continue to get pushed off and retirees with diminishing payouts from their 401(k)s and other savings will reenter the workforce at an accelerating pace.

Evidence of the former is in the CareerBuilder survey. One in five employers report being asked by employees to postpone retirement. Most of those employers (86 percent) said they would consider it.

If the demographics are any guide, 100 percent may come to wish they did.

But none of this means that a recovery is in the making. All it means is that the pace of decline is slowing. The good news is that there’s less bad news, but the bad news is that there’s still plenty of bad news.

Stimulus

The last 18 months have resulted in job losses equal to job gains of the previous 42 months. A recovery will require job creation of 200,000 or more per month. Right now there’s nothing to show this will occur anytime soon, despite any claims to the contrary.

Lately the President has talking about how many jobs are being “created or saved” by stimulus funds. That’s an interesting way to put it. The New York Times has diplomatically described these claims as being “unverifiable.” Considering what a big deal the administration has made about the need for transparency let’s be undiplomatic and call them what they are: BS. There is no way to measure if a job has been “saved,” and such talk only underscores the fact that the Administration lacks confidence in the ability of $787 billion stimulus package to do much. It was supposed to prevent unemployment from exceeding 8%. Well, so much for that. So far the money has largely gone into infrastructure projects, most of which do not result in permanent jobs.

The massive increases in public debt, in America and other countries, while necessary to stabilize economies, will result in sluggish growth for years. The IMF estimates that public debt in the world’s leading economies will rise to 100% of GDP by 2010 and to 140% by 2014. To put it in perspective: by 2014 the United States and other members of the OECD will owe, on average, $50,000 for each one of their citizens. No country has ever managed to spend its way to prosperity, and the massive amounts of borrowing by governments will reduce funds available to private industry and consequently limit growth. This means that the economies of most countries will struggle to realize their potential — dragged down by such large debt burdens.

What this all means is that in most of the world’s economies, the government will be the dominant source of growth — and jobs. And governments are not good at that. Recent policy actions don’t suggest otherwise. The Speaker of the House — the Honorable Nancy Pelosi — made the statement that the cap-and-trade bill could be described by four words: jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. If government programs were so good at creating jobs and managing growth, the Soviet Union would have been the biggest economy in the world. And considering the track record of the Speaker’s home state of California in that respect, it might help to know what exactly the lady bases her claims on.

Whatever your opinion on climate change, this bill is a bad idea and incredibly ill-timed. The bill imposes more tax burdens at a time of economic decline, while expecting growth in employment from development of green technologies that are in their infancy at best. Most are years away from reaching the point where they will go mainstream enough to generate sizable numbers of jobs. There just aren’t enough jobs that will be created in the next few years making windmills and solar panels to make a sizable dent in the unemployment picture. Add to that the possibility of healthcare reform with a potential tab of $1.6 trillion, and increases in minimum wage, and one has to wonder: What exactly are policy-makers thinking?

Where the Jobs Are

Since 2008 employers in America have eliminated thousands of recruiting jobs. A lot of these are not coming back anytime soon. Perhaps the President can find a way to save some, but assuming he may not find time in his agenda to do so, recruiters looking for work should consider working for the Federal Government and employers that provide services to the government. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is designed to fund the creation (or saving?) of 3.5 million jobs over the next two years. Funding for government projects that will create these jobs is now starting to flow. Federal agencies that will directly create new jobs list their positions here.

To get some leads on what projects are being funded, and therefore the providers that may need recruiters, look for RFPs put out by Federal Agencies. These are all published in the Federal Register and on the individual agency websites, along with details on those being awarded these contracts.

Looking wider, companies that deal with growing economies — specifically China, India, Australia, and Singapore — will also be hiring. The World Bank forecasts that the Chinese and Indian economies are expected to grow by about 7% this year. Certain Middle Eastern countries, particularly some in the Gulf States, like Qatar, will also see growth rates of 5%. The International Labor Organization projects employment growth will be positive in South Asia and parts of the Pacific. Businesses based in these regions and doing business here are hiring. Even in Western Europe, several countries — like Switzerland — are experiencing chronic shortages of talent.

Regionally, of 381 metropolitan areas in the U.S., the 15 that are still growing are mostly in oil and natural-resource-rich regions of Texas, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas. The energy industry, in these areas and elsewhere, is also seeing a resurgence — oil-rig operators are bringing more rigs on-stream, up 25% in the last month.

This Too Shall Pass
It ain’t over till the plus-sized woman sings, and by most accounts right now she’s not even on the stage. Recruiting as a profession has been around for over 2,000 and it will survive the current crisis. The road ahead is bumpy and uncertain. There’s little to be optimistic about. Welcome to an era of lowered expectations. But recruiting is still a business-critical function.

A Bloomberg survey before the numbers were released this morning said economists were expecting a decline of about 367,000 jobs. Other surveys suggested an even lower number. Either way, the report was bad news and investors reacted by selling stocks, pushing prices lower the day before U.S. markets close in observance of Independence Day.

Monster Worldwide, which makes its money when companies are hiring, lost $1 on the earnings report. It was trading at $10.92 a share at midday in New York.

The job loss barely nudged the unemployment rate, which rose only one-tenth of a point from May. That suggests discouraged and long-time unemployed workers are taking themselves out of the labor market.

The BLS report says: “The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 433,000 over the month to 4.4 million. In June, 3 in 10 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.” These are still included in the unemployment rate. However, the report notes that about 2.2 million more Americans are out of work, want to work, but have grown so discouraged that they have largely given up. These workers are not included in the unemployment figures.

When discouraged workers are included in the calculations, the unemployment rate is actually 10 percent nationally.

The unemployment rate is likely to rise as jobs continue to be shed. Christina Romer, chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC, “Employment and unemployment are lagging series. So we are in for some more job losses.”

Most of the other indices that track jobs and public confidence support Romer’s view. The Monster Index, released the other day, was essentially flat from May, while the number of jobs posted online declined after a robust jump the month before. Consumer confidence was down about 10 percent from the previous month.

In the BLS report itself there is evidence that while monthly job losses have eased since the winter, the economy is not yet in recovery. The average workweek is now at the fewest hours since the data was first collected in 1964. On average, those production and non-supervisory workers still employed are putting in only 33 hours a week. That’s due to furloughs, reduced hours, and shortened workweeks, which have the effect of cutting wages, even though the government reports that hourly income has increased 2.7 percent in the last year.

Job losses were worst in the manufacturing sector, where the auto industry slump was largely responsible for the decline of 136,000 jobs. The professional and business services industry contributed 118,000 losses in June, while the construction industry shed 79,000 jobs. The balance came from retail, information (which includes the publishing industry and is not just IT), and finance.

Health care added 21,000 jobs in June.

The number was 180,000 less than a Dow Jones Newswires survey of economists predicted. It was also significantly less than the 565,000 jobs Wanted Technologies said were lost in May.

Stocks rallied on the news immediately after the market opened, but turned negative in part the Associated Press reported, on a rumor that the government’s job loss number was wrong. The Labor Department said the numbers are correct.

Despite the encouraging job loss numbers, the BLS report showed the unemployment rate rose to 9.4 percent, a little higher than had been expected. The rate, up half a point over April, grew the number of people out of work by 787,000. Officially, 14.5 million people were unemployed in May. Of that number, 21 percent have been out of work for 15 or more weeks. These long-term unemployed, as the government calls them, have now reached 4.5 percent of the entire U.S. workforce, a percentage not seen in the 51 years the data has been collected.

“There is pretty good evidence that the recession is bottoming,” Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist of ChannelCapitalResearch.com, told the AP. “The real question is the type of recovery. Just because we’re reaching a bottom doesn’t mean a bounce is imminent.”

Several indices have shown signs of improvement. The Conference Board reported consumer confidence rose in May as did the number of jobs advertised online. The Monster Index, though dropping two points, has halted its rapid decline since May 2008 when it stood at 166. Last month it was at 118.

Economists have been predicting a slow recovery and the BLS report certainly offers support for that view.  The average workweek fell to 33.1 hours, a record low, evidence that employers are still cutting hours. At the same time, those working part-time because they have no other choice, and those considered marginally attached to the workforce also grew in May. When added to those out of work, the unemployed and underemployed rate hit 16.4 percent, about 40 percent higher than a year ago.

The biggest losses were in manufacturing, where 156,000 jobs were lost. Most of that came in automotive related sectors. The BLS reported, “Three durable goods industries — motor vehicles and parts (-30,000), machinery (-26,000), and fabricated metal products (-19,000) — accounted for about half of the overall decline in factory employment. Since its most recent peak in February 2000, employment in motor vehicles and parts has fallen by about 50 percent.”

Construction was also off, though the 59,000 jobs lost was half the 117,000 average of the last six months.

There were also significant losses in finance, professional and business services, and in retail. Only health care showed real gains, adding 24,000 jobs in May.

In May, there were 250,000 more jobs posted online than in April. The 8 percent increase brought the number of advertised jobs online to 3,367,000. Though modest, the increase dwarfs the 21,000 job posting gain The Conference Board reported in October 2008.

“The May bounce in labor demand is a very welcome sign,” said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. “Labor demand typically leads the trend in both employment and unemployment, so positive signals on labor demand are always important.”

While some of The Conference Board’s four U.S. regions showed more improvement than others, all had more online jobs advertised in May than in April. This extended to the state level where 43 states had more jobs.

With every silver lining there comes the dark cloud. Even with the increase, the number of online vacancies is 1,152,000, or 25 percent, below last year’s advertised openings. Overall in the U.S., as of April there were 4.4 unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy, according to The Conference Board.

That picture will undoubtedly change Friday when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its monthly employment report for May. Wanted Technologies, which gathers the data for The Conference Board’s Help Wanted Index, predicts the BLS will report the U.S. economy gave up 565,000 jobs in the month, a number that is about 6.6 percent higher than what the company says is the consensus of economists.

Economic predicting, however, is a dicey business, bearing more than a passing resemblance to crystal-ball gazing. Besides The Conference Board’s upbeat report this morning, other reports from the Institute of Supply Management and the government showed declines in certain watched indicators, but because they were less than expected, stock prices are up by triple digits.

The ISM reported that manufacturing continued to shrink during May, but by at a rate less than in prior months. A construction report from the government showed spending in April rose for the second month in a row. The increase was the largest in eight months. And, though consumer spending fell in April, the decline was less than had been predicted.

Recruiters are also feeling more confident that we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. ExecuNet’s Recruiter Confidence Index, released today, surged 16 points during May. It was the the third increase in as many months. The index surveys executive search recruiters who are part of the ExecuNet network on their expectations for increases in search assignments.

Of the 143 executive recruiters surveyed, 57 percent are confident or very confident the executive employment market will improve in the next six months; 67 percent of the survey respondents expect at least a 10 percent increase in corporate search assignments.

“This looks very much like an inflection point,” says Stephen Stanley, chief economist for RBS Securities, who was quoted by Marketwatch this morning. “And the corroborating evidence … all suggest that the pace of layoffs is finally beginning to abate.”

Nevertheless, the 539,000 jobs lost during April pushed the unemployment rate nationally to 8.9 percent. It could have been even higher, but for government hiring in anticipation of the 2010 census.

“It is a sobering toll,” said President Barack Obama, cautioning that, “We should expect further job losses in the months to come.” Still, “The gears of our economic engine do appear to be slowly turning once again,” the President said. “Step by step, we’re beginning to make progress.”

The American people apparently sensed that too. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence Index for April took its biggest jump up in more than year, rising from 26.9 to 39.2. The 5,000 households that were surveyed also showed more optimism about improving business conditions. Those expecting that jobs will continue to decline over the next several months decreased from 41.6 percent to 33.6 percent, while those expecting more jobs increased to 13.9 percent from 7.3 percent.

That confidence was supported by a slight rise in the Monster Index. Though the change is still far below where it was a year ago and not even as high as in February, the Index found that eight of the nine regions in the U.S. had increases. Leisure and hospitality and some increases in banking and finance were the primary drivers to the Monster Index improvement, suggesting that seasonal hiring is probably playing a role in moderating the job losses.