Indeed.com beats Labor Department in jobs available evaluation

June 17, 7:49 AMBirmingham Science News ExaminerPaul Hamaker

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This evaluation was done using data from Indeed.com and the U.S. Labor Department monthly reports.

The number of jobs available nationwide from all of Indeed.coms sources is displayed as looking backward seven days. This includes the majority of local newspapers, national newspapers, Monster, Careerbuilder, Federal Government, State Government, Local Government, and a host of others.

I looked at Saturday because that captures a full previous week including the Sunday Newspaper job ads, all the weekly headhunter postings, and all other jobs posted at the sites Indeed.com covers. The pay scale is from $7/hour to $300,000 a year.

One can infer the following from the chart and data tabulated below.

1) Indeed predicted an increase in hiring at least two weeks prior to the Labor Department report for the same time frame in May 2009,
2) Indeed allows a broader spectrum inspection than the Labor Department data because it is searchable in boolean logic,
3) The correlation between Indeed.com and the Labor Department statistics for the same time frame has an r value of 0.97. For those who do not know about r values this is good correlation, very good in fact.
4) A probable savings to the taxpayer would be farming out the statistical reporting to Indeed.com as their data is just as predictive as the Labor Department, more timely, and it is free.

Can you say "good news."

This is substantiated by numerous news reports.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/08/AR2009050800394.html?nav=rss_business
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090508-713714.html
http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKN0845562320090508

Data
                  Jobs
Date      Available
07-Feb     928972
14-Feb     755989
21-Feb     650530
28-Feb     759728
07-Mar     776768
14-Mar     738771
21-Mar     760875
28-Mar     765009
04-Apr     758726
11-Apr     729621
18-Apr     737860
25-Apr     813377
02-May    843213
09-May    851774
16-May    803135
23-May    781657
30-May    706523
06-Jun    756212
13-Jun    723627

One note: I neither work for Indeed.com, have no financial interest in the company, and do not know any of Indeed.coms employees. No one from Indeed.com contributed to this article in any way nor were they aware I was going to do such an article.