With the national unemployment rate continuing its uphill climb, many people are either looking for work or concerned about their chances of finding jobs if they are laid off.
According the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 9.5 percent of the nation’s population was unemployed in June. This figure is now 3.9 percent higher than it was during the same month in 2008.
But hope may be on the way, at least for upper level management jobs. According to a recent press release, the CareerCast.com and JobSerf Employment Index, which measures online recruitment activity for managerial positions across the country, experienced yet another increase.
The number of available job listings for C-level, VP, Director and managerial positions rose for the third month in a row during July. During the month the Index saw the largest increase it’s had since January of 2008.
According to the release, the number of listed jobs online for these positions increased by 17.8 points. This rise follows June’s increase of 3.8 points and May’s gain of 15.2 points. In July, the number of executive and management-level jobs had an index value of 78.2. This shows drastic improvement from April’s Index value of 41.4 points.
Despite the rising unemployment, the release went on to say that white-collar job seekers are seeing “more opportunities than since the beginning of the downturn last fall.”
Of those jobs monitored by the Index, positions for all levels of management increased by 20 points. Jobs for VP-level candidates saw a rise of 14 points, while C-level management positions grew by 7 points.
The area found to have the largest number of jobs posted online for this level of employment was Washington, D.C. The nation’s capital had one-and-a-half times as many jobs available as the second place metro area, Boston. The remainder of the top five areas for managerial jobs were Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco.
When the results were broken down by region, the West was found to have the strongest gain in management positions, going from 55.9 points to 75 points. Despite this 19.1 point gain, it is still behind the Northeast, which climbed to 18.9 points to stand at 87.5 points, an the Southeast, where there was a 15.9 point gain. Currently, the Southeast stands at 80.3 points. The Midwestern region continues to struggle, regardless of gaining 11.5 points, with an Index value of 72.4 points.
“While all regions saw a rise in hiring, cities with the lowest hiring levels are concentrated in the Midwest, Southwest and Florida,” JobSerf’s Chairman Jay Martin said in the recent press release. “Although the Index is still 22 points lower than it was a year ago, the gap is slowly closing. We are encouraged at both the direction and magnitude of July’s gain. It shows the positive recovery, which started in the late spring, is still continuing.”
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