Career development websites have shown a 20 percent increase in the number of unique visitors on a year-over-year basis, according to a study by Nielsen Online. According to their report, 49.7 million unique visitors accessed career development websites in January 2009, compared to 41.5 million in the same period last year.

 

According to Nielsen Online research director Chuck Schilling, the difficult economic context we’re living in, as well as the rising unemployment rate, have driven people to these websites. Furthermore, it’s not just unemployed people that are using them, since many users access them from work, while trying to get a sense of the job market before a potential layoff.

 

The most impressive growth was in the 65+ age category, where the number of unique visitors grew by 41 percent compared to the same period last year. The trend, Schilling explained, is towards later retirement or partial retirement. The other age categories grew in between 10 and 20 percent compared to January 2008.

 

A state index revealed that residents in Colorado were 50 percent more likely not to be employed than the average web visitor. In addition to that, residents in Michigan and Utah were the second and third most likely to report not being employed.

 

 The most popular career development destinations, the report mentions the following: CareerBuilder Network (6 percent growth compared to last year), Yahoo! HotJobs (7 percent growth), Monster (-11 percent growth), Indeed.com (79 percent growth), USAJOBS (104 percent growth), Simply Hired (209 percent growth), Job.com (24 percent growth), and Snagajob.com (84 percent growth).