JOBSPAGE ASK THE RECRUITER UNITY TEACHING WRITING JOB FAIRS
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Jobs Down, Interest in them Up
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If you take a look at the trend line for how often the word Jobs shows up in Google searches over the past several years, you'll see a pattern.

Interest seems to taper off in the last three months of the year, hitting its lowest point around the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas -- and then climbing sharply as people being working on those New Year's resolutions to get into new jobs.

It's no wonder people suspend their job searches around the holidays. They're busy, employers are busy and budget years are ending. But, with the new year, hope for new budgets and a renewed sense of urgency, we start looking again.

That all makes sense.

That's not happening this year.

The trend has not fallen off for 2008, as it did in past years. But that doesn't necessarily mean people are looking for new jobs, either.

Two of the top stories for hits in this last quarter of the year have been an Associated Press story about employers cutting jobs harder than they have in the past five years and another AP story that the Pittsburg Post-Gazette headlined "Vanishing jobs, stressed consumers feed downturn."

If there is a lesson in any of this, it is that people are concerned about the job market -- and that they will probably have a lot of competition when we hit the first of the new year.

Get that application ready.


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