You're Hiring? Wow!

The market tanked again today, GM is laying of 10,000 workers and the ad industry cut nearly 19,000 jobs in December. However, a new report out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics had one nice statistic: online media and search companies actually added staff. While the ad industry overall shrunk, internet media companies and search portals added 800 more jobs in December 2008 bringing the total jobs in that sector to 82,200 jobs – the highest level since 2002. This data suggests that once the economy gets moving again, this area will expand rapidly. It also speaks to the fact that money must be going into these areas if they are hiring, which is just one more vote of confidence for the future of online marketing.

What the statistics do not get to is what type of work these employees are doing. Perhaps, these companies are strong enough to actually be innovating in this downturn and exciting ideas will materialize over the next few years. It’s especially striking in comparison to the woes of the newspaper industry which hopes mostly to survive these times. The print media may innovate to survive, but these statistics suggest the online media and search companies may actually be able to strengthen their core capabilities. Combine the strength the industry is demonstrating with the recent articles about Google putting electric metering online and you can imagine we are only getting closer to a fully web integrated society.

By Kate Grossman