Monster Employment Index Europe Declines 4% Year-Over-Year

Monster Employment Index Europe Declines 4% Year-Over-Year

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- November 2012 Index Highlights:

• The Monster Employment Index Europe reports a fourth consecutive month of annual decline, recording a four percent decrease in online hiring over the year in November

• Belgium and the United Kingdom are the only two regions to report annual growth, both up one percent. All other regions report reduced online recruitment activity compared to year-ago levels

• Germany continues to decelerate, recording an annual decline of five percent from a positive growth rate of two percent in October

• Environment, architecture, urbanism records a seventh consecutive month as the top performing industry year-over-year while Transport, post, logistics reports the sharpest reductions for the second consecutive month

• Managers (up five percent) sees the greatest increase in demand year-over-year of all occupations

• Elementary occupations (down 16 percent) continues to report the weakest rates of annual growth for the sixth consecutive month

TheMonster Employment IndexEurope is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career web sites and online job listings across Europe. The Index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source, but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.

"As the wider European economy continues to struggle, hiring remains cautious and even Germany is feeling the effect, charting an annual decline for the first time in 31 months," commented Alan Townsend, Senior Vice President of Sales Readiness and Business Operations for Monster Europe. "However, we continue to see pockets of resilience in recruitment across industries including healthcare and engineering and it's also encouraging to see the UK enter into its fourth month of positive growth."

Monster Employment Index Europe results for the past 18 months are as follows:

Industry Year-over-year Trends: Five of the 24 industry sectors monitored by the Index in November exhibited positive annual growth trends.

• Environment, architecture and urbanism (up 23 percent) continued to report the greatest increase in online recruitment of all industries in November and registered a seventh consecutive month at the top of the Index

• Education, training, library (up 15 percent) retained its second place position in the Index and reported its tenth successive month of growth, with the strongest demand seen across Belgium, Sweden and the UK

• Year-over-year, Production, manufacturing, maintenance, repair (down 11 percent), extended a downward trend that began in August

• Arts, entertainment, sports, leisure (down eight percent) registered reduced demand compared to the same time last year, and recruitment levels were down across all the major markets in Europe

• For the second consecutive month Transport, post and logistics (down 12 percent) recorded the most significant reductions in online recruitment activity compared to year-ago levels

Occupation Year-over-year Trends: Two of the nine occupational groups monitored by the Index in November exhibited positive growth trends.

• Following seven months of annual decline Managers (up five percent) noted revived demand in online recruitment activity compared to the same time last year and placed top of the Index

• Online demand for Craft and related trades workers (down 11 percent) extended a downward trend in November for a third successive month and charted the steepest reduction since March 2010

• Elementary occupations (down 16 percent) continued to exhibit the weakest demand of the occupational groups, reporting its lowest levels of hiring activity since December 2009; however, Italy, Sweden and the UK noted some annual gains

The full monthly Monster Employment Index reports for Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom will be made available on Tuesday, 13 November at 06:00 CET at: about-monster.com/employment/index/17.

Data for the month of December 2012 will be released on January 4^th, 2012.