Pink Slips, Job Hunts, and the Herd Mentality

by Vera H-C Chan

Where to now?

January is beginning to look like the career killing fields, with companies starting the work week with bleak layoff news. According to Forbes' tracker, America's 500 largest public companies have passed out more than 130,000 pink slips. (For layoffs over the long term, the Bureau of Labor Statistics page of Mass Layoff Statistics tracks establishments which file at least 50 claims.) These numbers won't let up, as economic forecasters predict unrelenting cuts for the next six months.��

But finding a paying gig?any gig?is a priority, and unsurprisingly�searches for job opportunities have been climbing for weeks. Many eyes aren't just looking to the�Obama administration to create opportunities, but to hire them: "Government jobs" (especially federal ones) lead the most employment-related searches on Yahoo! in the past 7 days, followed by "part time jobs," "online jobs," "work from home jobs," "jobs in dubai," and "fedex jobs." Not that this work will be easy to come by either, as American cities and states facing budget cuts have made such positions less stable and less available. (At least it's not as bad as Iceland.)

Compare searches to the same time last year, when people looked online for jobs, but not nearly to the same degree of specificity ("job descriptions," "job fairs," "job interview tips").� Even more illuminating are disciplines that have seen a huge spike in the past 7 days. Check 10 of the fastest-moving "job" searches?and while we're at it, the the 10 fastest moving "layoff" lookups.

The Grim Picture: Fastest Moving "Job" and "Layoff" Web Searches, past 7 days

1.	Hotel Jobs	�	1.	Clear Channel Layoffs
2.	White House Jobs	�	2.	IBM Layoffs
3.	Information Technology Jobs	�	3.	Disney Layoffs
4.	Secret Service Jobs	�	4.	Intel Layoff
5.	Air Traffic Controller Jobs	�	5.	Harley Davidson Layoff
6.	Genentech Jobs	�	6	Williams Sonoma Layoffs
7.	Technical Writer Jobs	�	7.	Bank of America Layoffs
8.	Top Paying Jobs	�	8.	Bose Layoffs
9.	Criminal Investigator Jobs	�	9.	Toyota Layoffs
10.	Frito Lay Jobs	�	10.	Microsoft Layoffs

Of course, one list is no correlation with the other, but layoffs often lead to career transitions?or taking any position that becomes available. Could a radio person find happiness in the Secret Service? Will someone from the Happiest Place of Earth find satisfaction investigating the criminal elements of society? Might a person versed in the workings of a Harley Davidson retrain him or herself to direct air traffic?

The layoff-weary looking for a place to rest their career ambitions may want to consider this NPR report about companies, like Southwest Airlines, which have pledged not to do layoffs. Or, for those with a macabre appetite for cynicism mixed with empathy, the New York Times pointed to hot times in the layoff industry.

By the way, regarding the above lists: Normally a percentage rate denotes how much a search term has risen or declined compared to the previous period. With so many cuts being announced from out of nowhere (for instance, "toyota layoffs" didn't exist as a Search term last week), these lookups have been mathematically off the charts. Grim days indeed.

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