Chart compares nine years of UK online recruitment activity

The alljobsuk.com National Online Recruitment Index has been monitoring the volume of vacancies advertised online on a weekly basis since August 2000, and has just produced its annual comparison chart.

The index monitors ten* of the leading job-boards which publish their vacancy volumes.  This year it traces a fall of some 45% (i.e. around fifteen million fewer vacancy ads) from 2008, which itself saw a 12% drop from 2007.

The chart below tracks the ebb and flow of the market over the past nine years.  The top line (2007) clearly indicates the big fall in late August of 2007 (the very week in which Northern Rock started to crumble), while the 2008 line records last year's steep decline.

As you can see, this year has been relatively flat, albeit with some modest growth over the last few months before the traditional Christmas dip.

Alljobsuk director Stephen O'Donnell expects the public sector to bear the brunt of the current crisis in the year ahead.  "Whilst it is the private sector that makes most use of online recruitment, we expect the alljobsuk.com National Online Recruitment Index to remain flat for at least the first half of 2010," he says.

* CV-Library, fish4jobs, Jobserve, TheITJobBoard, Jobsite, Jobsearch, Monster, Reed, totaljobs, JustEngineers