Beyond.com has released an eye-opening report on the rise and decline of industry-specific online job postings. Sales leads the pack, but IT has taken a big hit.
According to the report, which pulled its data from Beyond’s network of 15,000 niche and regional sites for their Fourth Quarter 2008 Career Trend Analysis, the top three industries for online job postings in Q4 included Healthcare & Medical (16.1 percent), Sales & Sales Management (13.4 percent) and Clerical & Administrative (11.8 percent).
Information Technology was eliminated from the top three industry positions for the first time since Beyond.com published the report in 2005, signifying that the deepening recession is finally beginning to take a toll on the IT job market.
The IT industry dropped to the #4 position after experiencing the largest percentage decrease in jobs over the previous quarter (-3.5 percent) and over the past year (-4.7 percent).
The sales industry experienced a 1.7 percent increase in jobs in Q4 2008, achieving the #2 position for online job postings with 13.4 percent of all jobs posted to the Beyond.com Network.
“When employers believe the economy is close to or has hit rock bottom, their first reaction is to kick revenue generation into high gear to position the company for future growth,” says Jim John, COO of Beyond.com, Inc. “With a tremendous amount of qualified talent currently looking for work, it appears that employers are taking advantage of the opportunity to acquire key sales professionals that have the ability to make a strong, positive impact on the business and offer low risk, high reward to the company.”
Click here to read a more in-depth analysis of the report, including a breakdown of postings by gender, industry, and age.
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February 3rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Hiring key sales professionals is also cheaper for a company especially in bad economic times. Sales people can be hired for very little salary with a commission basis. It makes sense.