Nielsen Online: Web traffic to job sites grew 20 percent last year

March 2, 2009

Rising unemployment rates over the last year provided a big boost in the number of people going online to look for jobs.

Career development websites saw a 20 percent year-over-year increase in web traffic from January 2008 to January 2009, a growth of more than 8 million unique site visitors, according to Nielsen Online.

CareerBuilder Network was the number one online career development destination in January 2009, with 20.8 million unique visitors, followed by Yahoo HotJobs and Monster.

"With the current unstable economy and rising unemployment rate, more people are heading online to search for jobs, and interestingly not just the unemployed," said Chuck Schilling, research director.

The career development category also grew 20 percent year-over-year among at-work users, suggesting that many people are trying to build up their resumes and get a sense of the job market before the next potential layoff, he added.

Older Americans were surprisingly active in looking for work online. The number of people aged 65 and older visiting career development websites grew 41 percent, from 2.5 million unique visitors in January 2008 to 3.6 million in January 2009.

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