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) |
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Computer/Math |
Architecture/Engineering |
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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 |
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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. |