April 2010: Employment Activity by U.S. Region

After falling to second place in February, the Northeast saw a 6% increase in job availability, and emerged as the best U.S. region to find a job. In contrast, after enjoying six straight months of gains (and finishing in first place for March) hiring in the Southwest fell by nearly 3%, causing the region to finish almost five points behind the Northeast, with an Index Score of 94.9. And while the region has actually enjoyed an impressive, 10.9-point improvement since the beginning of the year, the West still lags significantly behind the rest of the country.

READING THE INDEX: The CareerCast.com/JobSerf Employment Index measures all Index scores against a base year of 2007, where the number of job listings available online during each month of 2007 = 100 points. This means that a score that is < 100 indicates the number of job listings for a given month is less than during the same month in 2007, while a value > 100 means that more jobs are available than were during the same month in 2007.

Table of Job Posting Index Scores by Region, Jan 2008 - April 2010:

Index Month	Northeast	Southeast	Midwest	Southwest	West
April 2010	99.7	87.3	91.3	94.9	74.5
March 2010	94.1	85.6	86.3	97.5	71.3
February 2010	94.3	79.4	95.8	88.6	70.9
January 2010	85.0	66.4	76.8	84.8	63.6
December 2009	84.8	76.0	75.1	79.3	67.6
November 2009	84.5	74.7	68.2	77.7	69.5
October 2009	78.0	66.6	62.1	73.7	63.8
September 2009	75.6	69.1	65.1	75.4	64.5
August 2009	92.0	83.3	80.4	86.3	73.7
July 2009	87.5	80.3	72.4	88.1	75.0
June 2009	68.6	64.4	60.9	69.4	55.9
May 2009	67.0	61.8	53.1	66.9	51.7
April 2009	46.0	42.5	40.4	47.5	40.1
March 2009	48.1	45.8	39.0	51.6	45.2
February 2009	51.7	50.4	46.6	54.4	50.5
January 2009	66.0	58.5	56.6	70.8	62.6
December 2008	69.7	69.9	59.8	71.8	66.3
November 2008	81.1	76.8	72.7	81.6	78.3
October 2008	75.1	71.5	71.1	79.0	75.2
September 2008	87.0	82.9	86.8	97.8	93.3
August 2008	109.0	102.5	105.8	115.2	109.4
July 2008	106.6	96.4	107.7	111.1	96.3
June 2008	108.0	101.2	100.4	111.7	103.0
May 2008	100.0	97.2	92.2	103.8	97.0
April 2008	98.3	92.3	96.7	99.6	95.5
March 2008	115.2	113.1	108.3	119.3	107.7
February 2008	114.5	105.0	133.6	117.3	105.3
January 2008	101.2	94.6	103.3	113.5	100.3

After suffering steep losses in March, hiring in the Midwest rebounded last month, gaining 5 points. Conversely, after leading all U.S. regions, job availability in the Southwest dropped by nearly 3 points, and the region fell to 2^nd place, behind the Northeast.