In addition to providing a snapshot of the labor market by state, we are also able to analyze the data by industry. Not every job fits easily into one of the categories, so the table below lists fewer jobs than the data by state, but the picture is just as grim. (LinkUp publishes job openings that are listed on over 11,000 corporate and employer web sites from around the country. As a result, the listings are from real companies, there are no duplicates because they are only pulled from a single source, and they are always current).

28 of the 36 industries showed declines in new job listings, and 32 of 36 categories showed declines in total job listings. Not surprisingly, Banking & Financial was particularly hard hit, as was Retail, Consulting, Supply Chain, and Insurance. Education appears to be the one bright spot in the economy, and while the numbers are small, Internet and Non-Profit also showed impressive strength. And so much for the doom and gloom stories about a lack of jobs and internships for recent graduates – new jobs in that category rose by 21% and total jobs rose by 15%.

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?

Killer Startups is a site that publishes summaries of startup ideas and has users vote on the one that they think will be the ‘killer’ of the bunch. We submitted LinkUp a while ago and they have included it in today’s group.

If you are so inclined, please take 5-10 seconds to go the page (click here) and click on the button on the upper left portion of the page (lists # of votes and has a + sign).

Thank you for your help.

Last week, we released the jobs report for October from LinkUp.com which showed that both new jobs and total jobs on the site rose by roughly 300,000 from September. (LinkUp aggregates and publishes jobs pulled directly from nearly 10,000 company web sites). Given the fact that the jobs are real and current (updated daily) and contain no duplicates (since they are pulled from a single source – the hiring company itself), we felt that the data was pretty reliable. But in light of the current economic meltdown and the nation’s rising unemployment, the magnitude of the increase from September was not only counterintuitive, it was, frankly, unbelievable. So we dug a little deeper into what might be inflating the numbers.

After some excellent sleuthing work by our team, we discovered that a relatively small number of companies (.4%) are assigning new unique URLs every day to all of the jobs they post on their own site. Our guess is that this allows the jobs to be ‘refreshed’ daily on other aggregating sites like Indeed and SimplyHired so that they appear higher in the search results. Our system for tracking new and unique jobs on LinkUp is tied to the unique URL for that specific job, so the new daily URLs that these companies assign to their jobs, even if it was on the site the day before, were counted in our system as brand new jobs. We hadn’t noticed this before because we deliver search results according to the quality of the match rather than by date of the post. We do this because all of the jobs on LinkUp are, by default, current, open, and available and we take them down immediately when the hiring company that posted the job on its own site removes that listing from its company site. So the ‘new daily URL, auto-refresh’ technique that distorts search results on SimplyHired and Indeed has no impact on LinkUp. This creates a better service for Job seekers using LinkUp, but clearly has an impact on our monthly report about the number of job listings by state and by industry. It also impacts others as well (see related points here and especially here).

By our estimate, the October report, for example, was inflated by 420,931 jobs. (Of course, September and all prior months were inflated by some large number as well for the same reason). The 38 companies we flagged for reassigning new URLs to their jobs each day posted a total of 40,430 actual unique jobs to their corporate sites during the month. But because of the fact that they constantly assigned new URLs to those openings, our systems counted that pool of jobs as 461,361 new and unique jobs. Needless to say, we’re both chagrined by the findings and pleased to have identified the culprit. And the fact remains that LinkUp published almost 1 million real jobs from real companies in a single, convenient site with the best search results of any job board on the web today.

The October jobs report is scheduled to be released tomorrow morning, but if the data generated from LinkUp.com is any indicator, the numbers may not be as bad as economists predict. LinkUp aggregates and publishes job listings directly from company web sites themselves. The September and October jobs data includes job listings from 9,753 companies in the U.S.

For those 9,753 companies in the data set, total jobs listed for the month rose from just over 1 million in September to 1.3 million in October. New jobs posted to their company web sites rose from 777,299 in September to just over 1 million in October. Every state showed an increase in both new jobs and total jobs posted with the exception of Oregon and Idaho.

We’ll see how this data compares to the U.S. Department of Labor figures released Friday, but my guess is those numbers will show continued massive erosion of jobs throughout the economy. Assuming that is the case, the challenge will be in reconciling the information. While the LinkUp data only includes job openings for roughly 10,000 companies in the U.S., they tend to be larger companies that actually have jobs posted on their company web sites (the average company found on LinkUp had 133 jobs posted on their site in October). As a result, the site does not factor into account the millions of small businesses that do not have a company web site or post jobs on their company web site if they have one.

Regardless to what extent the LinkUp data is an indicator of what is happening in the broader U.S. economy (and I happen to think it is relevant to some degree), there is no doubt that LinkUp is the single best site on the web to look for a job. Where else are you going to find 1.3 million current, real jobs from real companies, many of which are unadvertised anywhere else on the web? Just as appealing, those jobs are made available without the hassle of having to wade through irrelevant postings, 3rd-party clutter, annoying advertising, job scams, and phishing and identity theft expeditions.

As reported last week, September’s results for LinkUp.com run highly contrary to the dismal job market indicated by the recent data from the Department of Labor. LinkUp, which aggregates and publishes only jobs pulled directly from company web sites, showed a substantial gain in both new and total jobs listed. Despite the fact that the number of company web sites is growing every month, the data and the table below only factor in those companies that were in the database as of August 1st (8,321 companies).

(If the chart below is too small to read, hit the Cntl button and the + button (on a PC) at the same time or the Command/Apple button and the + (on a Mac) to enlarge your browser window…)

Surprisingly, both new and total job listings from the 8,321 companies grew by over 70,000 jobs, and increase encompassed virtually every single vertical category. Technology jobs showed the largest increase by quantity, while restaurant and food service jobs showed the largest percentage increase. Other significant increase included jobs in engineering, aerospace, banking, sales, and retail.

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 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, so the data set is most likely skewed towards larger companies.

At any rate, the results for September are interesting, if for no other reason than the glaring contradiction to the Department of Labor data. It’s just another reason why LinkUp is the best site on the web to look for real, available, unadvertised jobs from real companies.

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.