Job-hunting on Monday? You’re not alone

Published Sep 18, 2016

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New York - It's Monday. You're back to work, and you're ready to buckle down.

Or maybe not. New data shows the beginning of the work week is when people are most likely to apply for a job. Tuesday is a little busier for applications than Monday, Wednesday a touch less.

By Friday, there's a steep drop-off. And on the weekend, when people presumably have more time for job-searching because they're off work, hardly anybody applies.

“Job seeker activity varies dramatically by day of the week,” said the September issue of DHI Hiring Indicators, which is published by DHI, a job-data firm, in cooperation with Steven Davis, a professor of international business and economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The analysis was based on 60 million applications to nearly 7 million job vacancies posted to online DHI platforms since January 2012.

In an email, Davis said the new findings could be useful to employers, who might decide to dangle more jobs on days when more people are looking.

Davis and DHI also discovered another phenomenon: People apply more early in the month than late in the month. There's a steep drop on the 31st of each month - but that's skewed by the fact that almost nobody applies for jobs on one of those, New Year's Eve.DHI doesn't have the data to show why people apply for jobs when they do.

Sure, we could give them the benefit of the doubt - some might be applying from home before or after work, rather than from the office, and some might be filing their applications after preparing them over the weekend.

Still, it's striking how few people apply on Saturdays and Sundays, which would seem to be a great time to search.

BLOOMBERG

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