1) Most labor economists expect the Labor market to continue to hemorrhage jobs until the end of the year. On Friday, many wallstreeters think the US will report 600k lost jobs in March. IBM, a healthy company just laid off 5,000 people. 2010 is probably the earliest the labor market stops shedding jobs. US Employment growth won’t happen until 2012-2013 according to most experts. Assuming the online recruitment market returns to “high water marks” by 2011 or 2012 is probably too bullish.

2) If Monster’s revenue is expected to fall from 25-40% in 2009, are we to believe CB’s fortune will be different? 2009 is the new reality for several years not an outlier, if analyst are forecasting a decline in revenue for monster, it would behoove CB to expect the decline in their revenue to be inline. Getting back 25-40% of revenue is a tall task.

3) With the rising popularity of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, and whatever comes next, are we to believe that the 1.0 job boards are going to be able to gain the market revenue that they lost? The US online recruitment industry is moving into 2.0, CB and Monster are shilling 1.0 solutions in a 2.0 world.

Short-term: Both CB and Monster probably will be forced to reduce their headcounts further between now and the end of the year. The analyst forecasts cited by CB CEO seem to predict that staff cuts will be the only way for both to be positioned for the future. Revenue can’t fall that fast without employee cuts.

Long-term: Anyone in this industry should be asking themselves if this economic crisis is just a cyclical downturn or if its a “game changer” for the industry. If its only cyclical in nature, then both companies will come back to pre-crisis revenues eventually and continue to grow. If the current downturn is a game changer, then perhaps we are watching the painful decline of two empires.