Although Chicago’s unemployment rate recently fell to 5.4 percent from 6.6 percent a year ago, it is still higher than those of the nation’s other largest cities. The good news is that the job market here is heating up-at least if you’re counting Internet job listings. “There are more online job postings in Chicago now than there have been in the last three and a half years,” says Bob Plummer, an analyst at Corzen, a market research company that tracks hundreds of recruitment Web sites and online job boards, including the Big Three sites: Yahoo HotJobs, CareerBuilder, and Monster. In fact, local job listings on those sites jumped to 39,890 in April, up 26 percent from a year ago. Still, as Plummer notes, compared with other places, Chicago’s job market could benefit from even more heat.

Number of Internet Job Postings, April 2006
(per metro area)

Computer/Math

Architecture/Engineering

Washington, D.C.
11,057
Los Angeles
5,072
New York
10,343
Washington, D.C.
4,294
Los Angeles
9,040
New York
2,547
Chicago
6,641
Boston
2,416
Boston
5,580
Chicago
2,196

Business/Finance

Health Care

New York
32,721
Los Angeles
11,781
Los Angeles
26,942
New York
5,875
Washington, D.C.
18,365
Washington, D.C.
4,388
Chicago
18,026
Chicago
3,896
Boston
10,618
Boston
3,708

Source: Corzen, Inc.