Economic indicators are always tricky as some are seemingly inconsistent. My favorite example in the recruiting space are the payroll and unemployment numbers. They often seem to move in opposite directions and therefore, to some, seem to be inconsistent. Yet they measure very different aspects so they can move in opposite directions and be consistent. Payroll numbers measure the number of people who are working while unemployment numbers measure not the number of people who are unemployed but the number of people who are actively searching for employment. During economic recoveries, people who weren't actively searching often re-start their searches so the unemployment numbers tend to increase before declining due to many finding work and it is during that decline that payroll numbers tend to increase.

The numbers that we're seeing at CollegeRecruiter.com are something like that. We just ended one of the best Septembers that we've ever seen, at least as far as revenues go. Yet we just posted a rather gloomy looking press release that indicates that the number of job posting ads on our site declined in almost every state in the country. How can both be true? Well, one reason is that the bulk of our revenues come from targeted email and cell phone text messaging campaigns and those don't show up in the job posting counts. Employers who purchase targeted email or cell phone text messaging campaigns tend to be hiring dozens, hundreds, or thousands of candidates or at least are planning to do so in the near future. Employers who rely exclusively on job posting ads tend to be recruiting one or two people right away. Postings simply don't generate the quantity or quality of response that targeted email and cell phone text messaging campaigns generate.

So, if you're a glass half empty kind of person then pour some whiskey into your morning coffee and tell yourself that there are potentially some very dark days ahead. On the other hand, if you're a glass half full kind of person, then this is some pretty good news at the start of this week and near the start of the new month.