More so than any other large media company, the New York Times is doing a phenomenal service for the unemployed by prominently highlighting the job scams that prey on job seekers. Over the past few weeks, the Times has run a number of stories that describe the most common job scams and ripoff services that are thriving as job seekers become increasingly desperate in their job search. Unfortunately, most of these scams rely on pay-to-post job boards (especially high traffic ones) to lure unsuspecting job seekers by posting fake job ads.

In a New York Times story yesterday, the Arthur Group was identified as a scam headhunting firm that posted ads throughout Careerbuilder to attract and dupe its victims. That story accompanied a front page Times story that exposed ITS and Benchmark Professional Careers as bogus ‘career management’ or ‘career marketing’ companies that add little to no value for their clients yet charge absurdly high fees (paid up-front, of course). The companies, and others like them, have been sued by and banned from doing business in various states, but they still manage to survive and thrive like cockroaches.

In another Times piece from August 8th, entitled ‘Online Scammers Target The Jobless,’ Riva Richmond identifies the most common job scams that plague traditional pay-to-post job boards today. These scams include up-front payments for materials or training, links to online forms that result in identity theft, mystery shopper positions, work-from-home scams, and ‘money-mule’ or reshipper scams. In all of these cases, the scams rely on pay-to-post job boards (Geebo.com was cited as one example in the article) to find and dupe their victims.

In that article, one of the pieces of advice that Richmond offers is to use niche job boards rather than the large mega-job boards like Careerbuilder and Monster. This is decent advice and probably would eliminate a sizeable chunk of risk, but even better advice for job seekers would be to use job sites such as LinkUp that do not allow companies to post jobs directly onto the site. LinkUp is a job search engine that only lists jobs that are found on company and employer websites themselves. Equally as important, LinkUp also does not list job openings from other job boards (which carry the same risks therefore as the mega-job boards themselves), which makes LinkUp entirely unique among job search engines.

In any event, I applaud the New York Times for prominently highlighting the fraud that unfortunately afflicts a large portion of the recruitment advertising industry. I wish more people in our industry were doing more themselves to protect job seekers.

As always, I try hard to refrain from self-congratulatory pats on the back, but once in a while I feel the urge to highlight notable, and even at times not-so-notable, achievements of JobDig and LinkUp. Earlier today, LinkUp received inclusion on Tech Crunch’s Go2Web2.0 site as a member of their highly esteemed web 2.0 canon. Though we’re in very good company among some of the most innovative, creative, and amazing web companies in the world, mention of the fact risks being likened by some to Steve Martin in The Jerk as he celebrates the arrival of the new phone book. “I’m somebody now! Things are going to start happening to me now.” So be it. We’re happy to be on the list.

After fixing two significant problems with our data (normalizing the data to account for a constantly growing database of companies and not counting duplicate jobs that companies re-post to their corporate web site every day with new URLs), we have finally generated an accurate, insightful report that provides a completely unique snapshot of the U.S. job market. The table below lists the number of new and total job listings, by state, found on 11,463 employer web sites from around the country.

Only 18 states showed an increase in new jobs, with Maine, Alaska, and Oklahoma showing the biggest increases and 20 states had an increase in the total number of job openings. Not surprisingly, 30 states saw the number of new job listings decrease from October while 29 states experienced a decrease in the number of total job listings. Indiana, Connecticut, and Tennessee were the hardest hit in both categories. In total, the number of new job listings on company sites dropped 5% from 1.2 million to 1.14 million, while the number of total job listings dropped 4% from 1.5 million to 1.44 million.

The data is generated from LinkUp.com, a job board that aggregates individual job postings pulled directly from company web sites such as Target, Apple, or Google. Because the job listings come directly and solely from the career sections of corporate and employer web sites, the jobs are real, current, and often unadvertised anywhere else on the web. LinkUp’s job postings also contain no duplicate listings for the same job because they are only sourced from a single site – the actual employer posting the job opening.

Last Friday, KillerStartups.com featured LinkUp in its daily poll (the site asks readers to vote on which of the selected startups will become the next ‘killer’ site on the web). The results made the Obama landslide look more like a razor-thin, legally-mandated-recount Minnesota Senate race with LinkUp annihilating the rest of the field.

Thanks to everyone who voted and thanks to KillerStartups.com. Now where can I go to pick up the theoretical internet dollars that I am sure we won?

Even worse than expected, today’s jobs report from the Department of Labor was dismal, with the U.S. economy shedding 240,000 jobs in October. This was the 10th straight monthly decline, and the nation’s unemployment rate now stands at 6.5%, a 14 year high. So far this year, 1.2 million jobs have been lost, with more than half of those losses occuring in the past 3 months.

What I am having trouble reconciling, however, is the data from LinkUp.com which shows dramatic increases in the number of job openings from over 9,700 company web sites that post jobs. While certainly not representative of the entire U.S. economy, LinkUp aggregates job listings from enough companies around the country, large and small, to provide some indication of what is going on in the broader economy, and yet there is a complete disconnect. As I pointed out yesterday, the total number of jobs for the almost 10,000 employers rose from 1 million to 1.3 million in October, with gains in virtually every state. Just as surprising, the job openings by vertical showed gains in almost every industry except Banking & Financial, Real Estate, and Restaurant & Food Service.

Again, these are real jobs from companies that are posting job openings on their own corporate web site. They are current, available, and often unadvertised anywhere else in print or online. But they are job openings, while the jobs numbers are actual jobs lost. And perhaps that is what explains the apparent discrepancy. Thousands of companies are laying people off in areas where they need to cut back given the current business climate, while some portion of those same companies, and/or thousands of different companies, have job openings in other areas of their business or are trying to grow their businesses given their own particular circumstances. At a minimum, the 1.3 million job openings found on LinkUp.com in October might provide some glimmer of hope that the unemployment picture may not be as gloomy over the long-term as some economists are predicting. We’ll see.

LinkUp, arguably the best national jobs site on the web today, has released a widget that allows any blogger (or any site for that matter) to publish jobs on their blog or web site. The widget is available here, and can be customized to publish only those jobs that the hosting site wants to publish (i.e., marketing jobs in San Francisco). (scroll down on this blog to see what the widget looks like…). Customization is achieved by selecting from any of the following criteria: key word, location, specific company name(s), and category or vertical industry. LinkUp also allows people to set the pixel dimensions of the widget through sliding bars for widget height and width (one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen for making widgets). Once the customization aspects have been set, code is generated for that specific widget to copy into the blog or web site. It couldn’t be any easier.

Eventually, we will begin paying affiliate sites a share of the click revenue that they generate on the job listings that employers are running paid-search campaigns on. And while I would certainly not pretend that the widget is going to provide anyone with a massive flow of cash, we hope that affiliate sites benefit from delivering a stream of very specialized, high-quality job listings that match the exact content of their blog or site.

For a limited time, I will send a free DVD of the movie Sweet Land to anyone that publishes the widget on their site. Just send me an email at diggings@jobdig.com once you have the widget loaded onto your site with the details of where I can send the DVD.

About LinkUp…

LinkUp’s mission is really quite simple – to build the largest, highest-quality, most searchable, relevant, and user-friendly database of jobs anywhere on the web. We do this by aggregating job listings that employers post on their own corporate web site. These job listings, pulled from roughly 10,000 U.S. companies, are often not advertised anywhere else on the web or in print and do not include any duplicate job listings. LinkUp does not publish any job listings from 3rd party intermediaries such as staffing companies, search firms, or headhunters and we’ve very intentionally kept the site free from annoying advertising.

Perhaps most importantly, the jobs are always current because they are removed from LinkUp whenever the employer removes them from their own corporate web site. LinkUp does not allow people to publish jobs directly on the site itself so there is absolutely no risk of identity theft and there are no work-at-home scams like you’d find on many job boards around the web today. Because the listings are often two-pages in length, with excellent information to search on, the search results users get from LinkUp are absolutely unparalleled. And finally, there are a ton of innovative features (tabbed browsing, for example) that allow LinkUp to deliver a highly unique, extremely user-friendly experience. It is, simply, the best national job board on the web today.

One of the recent changes we have made in examining LinkUp jobs classifieds data is to report the number of new and total jobs listed on the site by job category and compare them to the previous month. As the chart below indicates, the 3 categories that showed the largest gains in August were Education & Training, Engineering & Architecture, and Technology. Combined, those 3 categories accounted for an increase of 11,403 new job openings on the company web sites being aggregated on LinkUp.com. In terms of declines in new and total job openings, Banking & Financial Services, Sales & Business Development, and Admin & Clerical showed the largest declines.

LinkUp.com aggregates job listings that employers post on their own corporate web site. These job listings or openings are often not advertised anywhere else on the web or in print. As well, the aggregated data, pulled from  9,713 companies of all sizes and in all industries throughout the U.S., does not include any duplicate job listings. But while the data presents a high-quality, unique, and relevant snapshot of the nation’s employment picture, it is not meant to represent the exact number of job openings in any given category. The vast majority of companies in the U.S. do not list their job openings on their company web site, if they even have a corporate web site, and LinkUp is still accumulating data from new companies being included in the data set. (LinkUp’s job data in July included 8,307 companies – 1,406 fewer than the total number of companies included in August’s numbers. This increase in companies being aggregated certainly has an impact on the comparison to July’s numbers).

August employment figures are not scheduled to be released until Friday morning, but if LinkUp data provides any type of early indicator, the nation’s employment picture continued to worsen in August. The number of total job openings posted on corporate web sites dropped 3% from July, while the total number of new openings posted showed no increase at all. While the percentage declines are smaller than they have been in recent months, the overall employment picture remains quite bleak. LinkUp.com aggregates and publishes job listings pulled directly from 9,713 corporate web sites from around the U.S.

In August, a total of 919,833 positions were listed on corporate web sites, down from 947,745 in July and 991,804 in June. Of those job listings, 695,879 were new positions, virtually unchanged from July. Unlike July’s numbers, when over 25% of the decline in total jobs were accounted for by California alone, August’s sharp decline in total jobs was evenly distributed among roughly a dozen states, with Illinois losing the most jobs (4,266). Connecticut showed the largest increase in both total job postings and new job postings, rising by 2,825 total job listings and 3,284 new job listings.

LinkUp.com aggregates job listings that employers post on their own corporate web site. These job listings or openings are often not advertised anywhere else on the web or in print. As well, the aggregated data, pulled from  9,713 companies of all sizes and in all industries throughout the U.S., does not include any duplicate job listings. But while the data presents a high-quality, unique, and relevant snapshot of the nation’s employment picture, it is not meant to represent the exact number of job openings in any given state. The vast majority of companies in the U.S. do not list their job openings on their company web site, if they even have a corporate web site, and LinkUp is still accumulating data from new companies being included in the data set. (LinkUp’s job data in July included 8,307 companies – 1,406 fewer than the total number of companies included in August’s numbers. This increase in the number of companies being factored into the data most likely resulted in a less negative snapshot than was actually the case throughout the country in August).

Thanks, by the way, to Small Business Information Technology Weekly for the excellent review of LinkUp.

Mirroring the figures released by the Department of Labor last week, data released by LinkUp.com on Monday provided further evidence that the nation’s jobs picture deteriorated substantially in July. The number of total job openings posted on corporate web sites dropped 4% from June, while the total number of new openings posted dropped 2%. Even more alarming, only 10 states in the nation showed an increase in the number of total jobs posted, and only 15 states showed an increase in the number of new positions listed. LinkUp.com aggregates and publishes job listings pulled directly from 8,307 corporate web sites from around the U.S.

In July, a total of 947,745 positions were listed on corporate web sites, down from 991,804 in June. Of those job listings, 694,392 were new positions, down from 706,111 new positions listed in June. Over 25% of the decline in total jobs was accounted for by California alone, which saw a decrease of 11,937 total job postings. Maryland showed the largest increase in both total job postings and new job postings, rising by 1,735 total job listings and 2,156 new job listings.

On August 1st, the Department of Labor reported that the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 5.7% in July from 5.5% in June with a total of 51,000 jobs eliminated during the month. For the year, a total of 463,000 jobs have been shed by employers throughout the country. Figures for May and June were revised slightly upward, with 26,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported. (See related analysis here).

LinkUp.com aggregates job listings that employers post on their own corporate web site. These job listings or openings are often not advertised anywhere else on the web or in print. As well, the aggregated data, pulled from  8,307 companies of all sizes and in all industries throughout the U.S., does not include any duplicate job listings. But while the data presents a high-quality, unique, and relevant snapshot of the nation’s employment picture, it is not meant to represent the exact number of job openings in any given state. The vast majority of companies in the U.S. do not list their job openings on their company web site, if they even have a corporate web site, and LinkUp is still accumulating data from new companies being included in the data set.