Employment report predicts U.S. shed 52,000 jobs in March

WANTED Technologies, a leading source of real-time employment market information, is forecasting that the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will announce a loss of 52,000 jobs in its upcoming report on United States non-farm payrolls for March 2010.

The forecast for March of a loss of 52,000 jobs is a relative worsening over the February loss of 36,000 jobs. Since February, Unemployment Insurance claims have increased slightly. Also, while WANTED's Hiring Demand indicators continue to show increases in new job ads, February's increase was less than the growth seen in recent months. This slight softening in the growth in Hiring Demand, combined with recent increases in UI claims, do not allow WANTED to forecast a more positive month-over-month employment report.

WANTED's forecasting model incorporates overall Hiring Demand based in part on a weekly measurement of the number of job ads placed with online job boards. The weekly Hiring Demand data that WANTED collects from online job boards tracks employment levels at the industry and occupational level. (More detailed analysis is available at http://www.wantedanalytics.com/insight/.)

US Non-Farm Employment, March 2010. Source: WANTED Technologies. New York, NY. March 29, 2010. (PRNewsFoto/WANTED Technologies)