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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

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Employment traffic reaches new heights

September 18, 2008

It’s been a wild and uncomfortable ride on Wall Street for the past few days, beginning with the news of Lehman Brothers and AIG coming very close to bankruptcy as well as the Merrill Lynch acquisition by Bank of America. While the credit crunch continues to impact the global financial markets, we have seen traffic to the Stock and Shares category reach a 3 year high on Monday, as investors nervously checked their portfolios and market updates.

The Employment category is another that is being impacted by the current economic climate. Traffic to the Employment and Training category is increasing along with the unemployment rate and news of layoffs. On September 5, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the August Employment Situation Summary, which showed an increase in the unemployment rate from 5.7 to 6.1 percent from the previous month. The announcement along with this week’s crisis on Wall Street has also sent traffic to the Employment and Training category to new all-time highs. The category reached the highest daily market share of visits of the past 3 years on the past 2 Mondays – Sept 8th, immediately following the latest unemployment numbers and Sept 15th, following the Wall Street announcements, where traffic is up 7% and 11% respectively from the same Mondays the previous year. So far, 4 out of the 5 highest days for traffic in the past 3 years have occurred this month.

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