Research: 33,100 Finance and Insurance Jobs Lost in March

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will announce a loss of 752,000 jobs in its upcoming report on U.S. non-farm payrolls for March 2009, WANTED Technologies, a provider of hiring insight and analysis solutions, predicts. WANTED’s forecasting model incorporates overall hiring demand based in part on a weekly measurement of the number of job ads placed with online job boards.

The weekly hiring demand data that WANTED collects from online job boards tracks employment levels at the industry and occupational level. WANTED is predicting a loss of 53,000 jobs in transportation and warehousing; a loss of 33,100 jobs in finance and insurance; and a gain of 28,600 jobs in health care.

Notable within these forecasts is the prediction that hiring demand in the health care sector, as reflected in online job ads, may be slowing. Although WANTED expects a rise in jobs for March, the concern remains that the drop in demand may soon become a drop in actual jobs.

WANTED's estimates are based on a model that incorporates its own hiring demand data with data supplied by government agencies and other researchers.