Just as the national hiring outlook enjoyed a significant improvement in February, individual U.S. regions fared better as well. The Midwest in particular was a top performer, boasting a whopping 19-point increase and finishing as the best U.S. region to find a job, up from third place last month. And while the West remained in last place for the third straight month, the region did manage a 7.3-point improvement to an Index score of 70.9 overall.
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 - February 2010:
| Index Month | Northeast | Southeast | Midwest | Southwest | West |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
January’s losses caused the Southeast and West to fall behind the rest of the nation, and even after showing improvement last month, it will take significant gains for these two regions to catch up. Although it dropped to third place, the Southwest also continued to show steady improvement with a 4.6-point gain, which marks its fourth straight month of positive job growth after the region suffered a 10.9-point collapse in August of last year.
Looking at regional performance dating back over the past two years, both the Northeast and Midwest registered the highest volume of open managerial positions seen by any U.S. region since September of 2008. However, that period also marked the beginning of the recent financial crisis, and in previous months managerial hiring activity had been significantly better.
- Chart of Job Posting Index scores by Region, Jan 2008 - Feb 2010:
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