comScore, Inc. released an analysis of Americans' usage of the job search category, the fastest growing content site category in 2008. The category has seen the number of visitors grow 51 percent to 18.8 million visitors, as layoffs mount and millions of Americans find themselves seeking new job opportunities. The final months of the year, which typically experience seasonal softness in job searching behavior due to the holidays, were instead some of the most heavily trafficked months of 2008.

CareerBuilder.com Job Search led the category with 9.1 million visitors, up 78 percent versus year ago, followed by Monster.com Job Search* with 6.7 million visitors (up 62 percent), Yahoo! HotJobs Job Search with 5.6 million visitors (up 146 percent) and Indeed.com Job Search with 5.1 million visitors (up 88 percent). SimplyHired, Inc. had the strongest growth rate of the top ten sites in the category, growing 161 percent to 3.1 million visitors.

"While much of the U.S. economy is suffering, one online category that has performed significantly better than average during these challenging times is job search," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore. "Online job search resources provide a vital service to those in need of new job prospects and opportunities, and Americans are turning online for this assistance now more than ever."



Women's Share of Time Spent on Job Sites Sees Growth

comScore also conducted a profile of visitors to the job search category, based on various demographic segments' share of minutes spent on Web sites in the site category in December 2008 and compared it to the same month in 2007. This profile reveals which demographic segments were disproportionately affected by the current job market. Interestingly, the share of minutes spent by women in the category grew substantially, up 7.2 percentage points versus year ago.

"It's possible that women are being either disproportionately affected by job losses, or perhaps are playing a more active role in the job searches of their spouses," added Mr. Flanagan. "In addition, we could be seeing a phenomenon of more households needing to have dual wage earners, as consumers battle the economic crisis amidst a sharp reduction in the value of their assets and net worth."

Other demographic segments accounting for a substantially higher share of the time spent on job sites in December 2008 than in 2007 include people between the ages of 25-49 (up 4.8 percentage points), households making at least $75,000 (up 3.1 percentage points), households without children (up 4.7 percentage points), and those in the South Atlantic (up 8.5 percentage points) and West South Central (up 3.9 percentage points) census regions.