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Across the nation unemployment lines are steadily growing. During January the country’s jobless rate climbed from 7.2 percent to 7.6 percent and, to no one’s surprise, job listings continued to decline. According to the Conference Board, the Employment Trends Index also dropped again in January.

The Index fell 1.0 percent from December’s 96.6 percent to 96.6 percent. This is particularly concerning when compared to the previous years. Between then and now there has been an 18.6 percent decline.

“The Employment Index has recently been declining faster than at any time since the 1974 recession,” said the Conference Board’s Senior Economist Gad Levanon. “Such declines suggest considerable job losses will persist for several more months. It is becoming clearer that the continued worsening economic conditions are forcing many companies to make further downward adjustments to their workforce.”

According to the data, the Employment Trends Index has been falling for the last 18 months. The decline has been seen throughout all eight of the categories the Conference Board monitors, but over the last six months this decrease has been particularly significant in the areas of temporary help hires and part-time employees for reason rooted in the current economy.

The Employment Trends Index uses eight separate labor-market indicators, all of which have been found to be accurate in their own right. Afterwards, these areas are combined to give a better picture of the current hiring situation. By doing this, the Conference Board is able to get a better picture of whether or not the number of job listings and other factors affecting the job market are actually declining. It also enables them to see what the trends really are.

The eight areas that come together to create the index are: the percentage of people polled who say that finding a job is difficult (The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey), Claims for Unemployment Insurance (U.S. Department of Labor), the number of employees hired on a temporary basis (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), the percentage of firms that are not able to fill positions at the time (National Federation of Independent Business), the number of people hired by temp agencies (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), part-time workers hired for Economic Reasons (BLS), job listings (BLS), Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board) and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis).

The Conference Board will be releasing its newest Employment Trends Index at 10:00 am on March 9th. This report will show how the job market faired in February. The Conference Board always releases the report the Monday after the Friday that the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its employment situation report.

With the economy suffering, choosing applicant tracking systems and other HR software has become more important than ever. Not only are hiring managers more concerned than ever about the cost of such programs because of the a lack of funds, but they are finding themselves overwhelmed with large bundles of resumes. Since there are fewer jobs to be had, employers that are currently hiring are receiving a greater than usual number of applicants, which makes ats programs vital to finding the right candidate.

Knowing this, Precision Resources, a nationwide staffing firm, recently selected Kenexa’s applicant tracking solution to assist with their various offices. The firm deals mainly with finding workers for employers in the engineering, construction and maintenance industries. According to a recent press release, Precision decided upon Kenexa’s as its provider of recruiting software solutions with hopes that the choice will enable them to have a better understanding of the hiring practices across their organization.

“We have a long-standing relationship with Precision Rsources’ parent company, Zachary Holdings, Inc,” said Kenexa’s CEO Rudy Karsan. “Now that Precision is using the same reliable Kenexa system, the two organizations will be able to track hiring metrics across all business lines. With an integrated and standardized database of candidate information, the companies can make better decisions on how to keep attracting the very best talent in the industry.”

Users of Kenexa’s software-as-a-service applicant tracking system are able to take their company’s Web site and turn them into interactive career centers. At the same time the program helps to reduce the amount of money spent per hire, which is extremely important in a time of tighter budgets. The ats also meshes with Kenexa’s testing and assessment programs in order to make figuring out which candidate is the best fit for the job in question much easier.

Other Features of the program include requisition creation, processing and posting, resume searching, sorting and filing, applicant workflow, interview scheduling and tracking, and candidate communications and reporting. This enables the user the monitor the entire hiring process much more effectively.

“We were looking for a solution that would offer not only the traditional candidate tracking functionality of a standard applicant tracking system, but that would allow our recruiters to mine candidates, create hot lists and separate information into the specific categories that are the primary drivers to our database,” said Jeff Roach, who is the director of field leadership/nuclear recruiting at Precision Resources. “With Kenexa’s system, we can do all of that, plus segment our database by client, allowing our recruiters to use information unique to each of our clients while still enjoying global oversight of the entire process.”

Finding a job in Rhode Island has been steadily getting more difficult in recent months. In December the state’s unemployment rate jumped 0.7 percent from November’s 9.3 percent jobless rate to 10.0 percent. This is the highest ratio of out of work residents Rhode Island has had in the last 30 years and the highest is the nation. During the same month the national average was 7.2 percent.

Because of the lack of Rhode Island jobs, employers that are hiring are finding themselves swamped with an overwhelming number of resumes. Case in point, the State Department of Labor and Training recently announced that they would be hiring 40 new workers in hopes of processing the ever-increasing number of claimants and has, so far, received more than 30 times that number of applicants.

According the department’s director, Sandra M. Powell, over 1,200 residents are all vying for the limit number of jobs. This has caused a bit of a problem. The Department will have to have assistance from another state agency in order to be able to process all of the applications.

With jobs so hard to come by in Rhode Island, the $19 an hour positions look very good to those without out work. The same can be said about being on the other side of the unemployment line.

Many feel that the Department isn’t moving quickly enough to fix issues with in its offices. The high unemployment rate has caused a drastic increase in the number of people trying to file for benefits, which, in turn, has caused issues with the Department’s phone lines and e-mails. This is slowing down those who recently lost their jobs ability to receive their checks. In fact, a State House hearing recently dealt with this problem.

A State House hearing recently dealt with the problem. According to the Providence Journal, Rep. Steven M. Costantino, who is the chairman of the House Finance Committee, feels that it is a “crisis” that people are waiting almost a month to receive their benefits.

The job announcements were posted online last month, in hopes of finding 40 new workers for the Department’s insurance call center. The available positions were listed as part-time opportunities with flexible hours. Despite this, there is a chance that some workers will put in as many as 35 hours a week. According to Powell the new employers should be added to the payroll by March 2nd.

In addition to this, the Department has enlisted the help of some of its retired workers. These individuals came in to try to help the current staff process new claimants as fast as possible. On February 2nd, started by asking back 8 retirees. As of now 23 prior workers are helping out, according to Department Spokesperson Laura Hart. She says that these individuals have processed over 1,100 weekly benefits and responded to more than 3,000 e-mails, along with many other tasks.

Despite this, the Committee feels that still more should be done to ensure that recently laid off workers receive their first checks in a more timely fashion.

After the new workers are hired, many expect that it will take as long as a month before they are ready to handle the full responsibilities of their roles.

With unemployment on the rise and the economy struggling, the country’s retail industry has taken a severe hit. Since many people are either without work or afraid of losing their jobs, spending on unnecessary consumer goods in down. This means that there are now fewer employment opportunities in the industry. Because of this, major department giant Macy recently announced that it will be doing away with 600 retail jobs in Florida when it closes its headquarters in Miami.

Although it will be closing up shop at its area headquarters, a representative of the company has stated that Miami will continue to house one of its eight regional offices. Only 35 to 40 executives are expected to remain in the area for the tasks needed to run this part of Macy’s operations.

Headquarters won’t be the only area of business affected. The company will also be decreasing the number of workers at both Macy’s stores and Bloomingdale’s department stores as part of a massive restructuring of its central operations. As a result, jobs in Florida won’t be the only ones to receive the ax.

According to a Macy’s spokesperson, the company plans to cut a total of 7,000 jobs across the nation. This translates to roughly 4 percent of their staff. At this time, approximately 180,000 people work for the retail giant. Not all of the jobs will actually result in another person claming unemployment. In some cases, the company will simply close gaps by not refilling already vacant payroll positions.

Some of the largest job cuts are expected to take place at Macy’s West headquarters in San Francisco, where approximately 1,400 people will be laid off. Another area that will lose a good number of employment opportunities is the company’s Central headquarters in Atlanta. The city, where unemployment reached 7 percent in November of last year, will lose somewhere around 850 jobs.

By eliminating these positions, Macy’s hopes to decrease their expenses by somewhere around $400 million a year as of 2010. Since many of the national cut backs will take place this year, the company has predicted that it will save $250 million during 2009.

At this time, Miami’s jobless rate is only slightly below the national average of 7.2 percent at 7 percent. Other industries in the area are also suffering. During the course of 2008 many customer service and call center positions were outsourced and the construction sector saw a large decline. The latter was mostly the result of a real estate market saturated with too many properties and foreclosures. Because of this, there was little need to start new building projects.