This post is a tip of the hat to an old friend on life support.
With 52% coverage of our test sample (see initial post for background), America’s Job Bank (AJB) clearly earned 5th place – delivering almost twice the coverage of 6th place GoogleBase (28%). Yet sadly, AJB’s days are numbered.
Since 1995, AJB, funded by the federal government, has helped the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) meet their mission of contributing to the more efficient functioning of the U.S. labor market. Before Craigslist accepted job listings, America’s Job Bank was there to accept free job postings and provide a free national electronic labor exchange.
Today AJB contains almost 2 million job listings, accepts resume postings, provides extensive labor market information thru partner site America’s Career InfoNet, and receives steady traffic volumes similar to Indeed and SimplyHired. But with many low-cost options available to employers for advertising job openings, and with many free options available to jobseekers for active and passive job search, the federal government no longer sees the need for AJB.
For the past few years, the leadership within ETA has made it clear that AJB’s days are numbered; so it comes as no surprise that the Associated Press reported on Friday that in the 2007 federal budget proposed by President Bush, 141 programs will be cut or eliminated – including America’s Job Bank. Projected savings are $15 million per year. On one hand I wonder what a private company could deliver with a steady funding stream of $15 million per year; but on the other, I know only a portion of the $15 million was actually going to run AJB – typical of government accounting, multiple subprojects were included under the AJB funding umbrella.
Even though AJB is on life support, it is too soon to write off this veteran of the electronic labor exchange revolution. Proposing budget cuts in Washington DC is always easier than achieving them. So for today, and perhaps tomorrow, America’s Job Bank delivers 52% coverage for our hypothetical jobseeker, and is the 5th best choice.
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