LinkUp Predicts Better than Expected Jobs Report on August 5th

MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Job search engine LinkUp.com released its 60-day job forecast today based on nearly 1,000,000 job openings indexed each month from over 20,000 company websites. Based on data from May and June, LinkUp is predicting that the July jobs report issued by the Labor Department on August 5th will be better than economists are expecting. Completely unique in the industry, LinkUp's job search engine only indexes job listings from company websites, making its data highly correlated to future hiring.

Consensus estimates for this Friday's jobs report forecast that non-farm payrolls grew by only 75,000 in July. While that would be an improvement from May and June's anemic job growth, roughly 200,000 new jobs are needed each month to simply keep pace with population growth. LinkUp, however, is forecasting that 105,000 jobs were created in July. Even more encouragingly, the search engine is forecasting that 150,000 jobs will be added in August. Unfortunately, LinkUp's jobs data from July indicates that the U.S. economy will add a scant 70,000 new jobs in September.

In July, new job postings on the 20,000 company websites indexed daily by LinkUp dropped 9% from June, while total job listings on those same company websites fell by 1%. Declines were spread throughout the country, with 42 states reporting a decrease in new job listings and 27 states reporting a decline in total job listings on company websites. In terms of jobs by category, new job listings fell in 27 of 31 industries, while total job listings dropped in 17 of 31 industries.

The education sector stands as perhaps the only bright spot in an otherwise grim report for July. Total education jobs on LinkUp rose 19% from June, while new job listings in the education industry increased by 36%. For more information on job growth in other industries, job growth by state, or LinkUp's jobs data for Q1 and Q2 of 2011, please visit LinkUp.com.

About LinkUp

LinkUp is a job search engine that only indexes job listings that are found on company websites.  The New York Times' About.com named LinkUp the best job search engine on the web because of its highly unique value proposition for both job seekers and employers. The search engine does not list any jobs from other job boards, nor does it allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site. Rather, LinkUp currently lists over 830,000 job openings indexed and updated daily from approximately 22,000 company websites throughout the U.S.

Media Contact:  Molly Moseley, [email protected], 952-277-4513

SOURCE LinkUp