After a tweet from Eric Mathews, “Seeing big increase in LinkedIn invites all of the sudden within past 7-14 days. I wonder what is driving it? Maybe @lalunablanca knows?”, I was motivated to check around. I’ve seen jumps like this in platforms when there’s been some mention in a popular news or television show. However, after looking around normal avenues, I was unable to find an ignition source.
My next step was to ponder causes for increased activity. I find myself looking at: LinkedIn traffic, Craigslist traffic, NASDAQ, and searches for the term “Career”. Going back to my geeky product engineering roots, I use graphs to quickly spot trends. The below are the graphs with straight trendlines drawn to spot accelerations (or changes in rates). Although I’m no economist, you’ll clearly see similarities in when a change occurred: positive on LinkedIn traffic, NASDAQ, “careers”, and negative on Craigslist.
I’ve read previously that on the verge of economic rebound (or thereabouts) that there has traditionally been a small reshuffling of the workforce. Maybe we’re seeing that eminent reshuffling, or at least some itches of changing to “a better option” being entertained.
As many (myself included) are saying, this will be no typical recovery. Therefor, some traditional recovery indicators may be misleading. Regardless, some indicators reflect change in the last couple of weeks. The interpretation is beyond my knowledge to estimate. Anybody care to take a stab at it?
Click to enlarge.
Tue, Sep 22, 2009
2009