Last week, it was widely reported that the United States economy added only 22,000 jobs in August, far below the predicted 78,000. What does that mean for the job-seekers who are already experiencing record unemployment lengths? Is this even more bad news?

No, we don’t think so. At least not right now.

Only a few days after this news made rounds, we saw a 10% increase in jobs posted on the companies we monitored over just two or three days. This was startling. Since we started monitoring companies earlier this year, the number of jobs has been very consistent, only increasing as we bring more companies on board. We checked our data to see if something was off, but no, increased job postings did happen that quickly. So what happened?

First off, the economic reports were for August, and traditional media reported a day later. Economic research doesn’t happen in real time, even in this day and age. In fact, in my day we were lucky to get reports two months or a quarter later. There’s always a lag with economic data, so take news in context.

September Surge is Real

“September Surge” is a term that refers to historically increased hiring in the month of September. There are several reasons for this.

• End of fiscal year cycles. September is the end of the fiscal year for a lot of corporations. This means new budgets, new initiatives, and teams need to be staffed for the new year.
• Labor Day. In the US, Labor Day traditionally marks the end of summer and the beginning of school years. People return from vacations and start work.

Our data collection verifies that a surge definitely happened at the beginning of September and continues to creep up as September progresses. If you are looking for new opportunities, this has been the best time in a while.

Terms and Conditions Apply

First, a few disclaimers that skew our data.

• We focus on companies headquartered in the US or multinationals with a huge US presence. We do a pretty good job of this.
• We try not to track high turnover jobs (retail and other on-location service jobs). We do a decent job of this.
• Our companies are tech-centric, but increasingly broad. Your mileage may vary with other sectors.

Act fast. Will this continue? Who knows. We all know things will start to slow down in November and December. There might be another pick up in January; there might not be.

Finally, and the biggest question, will this lead to long term responsible behavior by recruiters and companies to treat candidates better? That’s definitely is unknown and the whole reason why we’re here.