StartWire Announces New Job Search Confidence Index (JSCI)
Lebanon, NH (PRWEB) February 19, 2014 -- StartWire (http://www.startwire.com) - America’s #1 job search organizer - announces today the launch of the Job Search Confidence Index (JSCI) – a new, proprietary method of tracking the mood of US job seekers nationwide. Data for the index comes from a monthly national survey that measures the confidence job seekers have that they will find a job in the next 45 days. The initial JSCI will be published on March 11, 2014.
"We see a lot of regular data on unemployment numbers and job creation, but these numbers lack an important vector…the voice of the job seeker," says Chris Forman, CEO of StartWire. "We believe job seeker confidence, like consumer confidence on the economic front, is a key leading indicator of the health of the labor market."
StartWire compiles the JSCI by sending out a monthly survey to a subset of its 2.7 million users. The short survey addresses a number of basic categorization questions (length of job search, industry, job type and state), for the purpose of observing specific trends. Then, it asks respondents to agree or disagree with the statement ‘I am confident I will find the job that I want within the next 45 days’, on a 6-point scale from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.
The resulting confidence data is scaled in the following manner to create the job search confidence index:
INDEX = (P1*1) + (P2*0.8) + (P3*0.6) + (P4*0.4) + (P5*0.2) + (P6*0)
• P1 = Percentage number of answers that responded Strongly Agree to the statement ‘I am confident I will find the job that I want within the next 45 days’
• P2 = Percentage number of answers that responded Agree to the statement ‘I am confident I will find the job that I want within the next 45 days’
• P3 = Percentage number of answers that responded Somewhat Agree to the statement ‘I am confident I will find the job that I want within the next 45 days’
• P4 = Percentage number of answers that responded Somewhat Disagree to the statement ‘I am confident I will find the job that I want within the next 45 days’
• P5 = Percentage number of answers that responded Disagree to the statement ‘I am confident I will find the job that I want within the next 45 days’
• P6 = Percentage number of answers that responded Strongly Disagree to the statement ‘I am confident I will find the job that I want within the next 45 days’
Similar to the consumer confidence index, the JSCI uses a model where a reading above 50 indicates improving confidence. A reading under 50 represents decreasing confidence and a reading of 50 indicates no change.
About StartWire
StartWire is America’s #1 job search organizer with more than 2,600,000 members. Job seekers across the US turn to StartWire to close the "resume black hole" by receiving automatic status updates from thousands of employers. Since its inception, StartWire has received rave reviews and coverage in US News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, TechCrunch, Mashable, ERE, and Human Resource Executive. StartWire is headquartered near Dartmouth College in Lebanon, NH. For more information, visit http://www.startwire.com.
Chris Forman, StartWire, http://www.startwire.com, (603) 359-0997, [email protected]
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