Despite the scare that ADP gave everyone this week, tomorrow’s jobs report from the BLS will be far better than the anemic consensus estimates for job growth in April. Economists are predicting that only 165,000 jobs were created in April in the U.S., but based on LinkUp’s jobs numbers in March, we are forecasting that 245,000 jobs were added last month. In March, new job listings in LinkUp’s jobs search engine (which only indexes jobs from company websites) rose 11% and total job openings rose 5%. (Because a job opening posted on a company website is a great predictor of a future hire, it is March’s job openings that provide the indicator for April’s job growth).

Unfortunately, LinkUp’s jobs data for April is far less encouraging. New job openings fell 9% last month, while total job openings were flat from March. (The numbers in the table above are slightly different because they include the average of our 2 data points for March in our ‘paired month’ methodology). Based on LinkUp’s data for April, we are predicting that job growth in May will slow down and that only 130,000 jobs will be added next month.

In terms of jobs by state, new job openings declined in 43 states but total jobs only fell in 21 states.

In terms of jobs by category, new job listings increased in only 3 categories, but total job listings increased in 15 categories.

LinkUp is the only job search engine on the web that indexes only jobs found on corporate websites throughout the U.S. Updated daily, LinkUp’s job search engine contains over 900,000 job openings indexed from 23,500 company websites. Because LinkUp does not include any jobs sourced from job boards and does not allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site, the search engine does not include any garbage listings such as job scams, phishing posts, work-at-home-scams, lead-gen bait, or old listings. And because LinkUp only indexes jobs from a single source (the employer’s corporate website itself), there are no duplicate listings that pollute aggregator sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired. As a result of these entirely unique attributes, not only is LinkUp the highest quality job site for job seekers (and it’s FREE!), but our jobs data is the ‘cleanest’ in the industry, entirely unencumbered by the noise that afflicts other jobs data sets.

Tomorrow’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will come in very close to the consensus estimates of roughly 200,000 jobs created in March. Based on data from LinkUp’s job search engine in February, a month in which new and total job openings on company websites throughout the U.S. fell by 11.5% and 2.1% respectively, we do not expect any significant surprises in March’s numbers. Unemployment might stay the same or even rise to some degree as formerly ‘discouraged’ job seekers are now re-entering the job market, therefore increasing the numerator in that calculation. But beyond the headline numbers, we expect that the BLS will revise upward their numbers for February to 300,000 jobs created. That’s a critical new ‘highwater’ mark since the recovery began some time ago and will deliver a strong signal that the improving labor market is far more substantial this spring than last when the ‘green shoots’ everyone was raving about were swiftly mowed down later in the year.

Even more importantly, based on LinkUp’s jobs numbers for March, we are forecasting that in April the U.S. economy will add 350,000 jobs. In March, new job openings on 23,500 company websites throughout the U.S. rose 13% while total job openings on those company websites rose 8%.

LinkUp is the only job search engine on the web that indexes only jobs found on corporate websites throughout the U.S. Updated daily, LinkUp’s job search engine contains over 900,000 job openings indexed from 23,500 company websites. Because LinkUp does not include any jobs sourced from job boards and does not allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site, the search engine does not include any garbage listings such as job scams, phishing posts, work-at-home-scams, lead-gen bait, or old listings. And because LinkUp only indexes jobs from a single source (the employer’s corporate website itself), there are no duplicate listings that pollute aggregator sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired. As a result of these entirely unique attributes, not only is LinkUp the highest quality job site for job seekers (and it’s FREE!), but our jobs data is the ‘cleanest’ in the industry, entirely unencumbered by the noise that afflicts other jobs data sets.

For the 2nd time in the past 3 months, both new and total job openings rose in all 50 states.

While not quite as uniform as the job openings by state, the number of categories showing an increase in new and total job openings was nearly as impressive.

So based on LinkUp’s jobs numbers for the first quarter, I would say that the green shoots we are seeing this year look more like buckthorn.

Below is the list of the top 50 job openings on LinkUp’s job search engine in February.

LinkUp is the only job search engine on the web that indexes only jobs found on corporate websites throughout the U.S. Updated daily, LinkUp’s job search engine contains 860,000 job openings indexed from 22,000 company websites. Because LinkUp does not include any jobs sourced from job boards and does not allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site, the search engine does not include any garbage listings such as job scams, phishing posts, work-at-home-scams, or old listings. And because LinkUp only indexes jobs from a single source (the employer’s corporate website itself), there are no duplicate listings that pollute aggregator sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired. As a result of these entirely unique attributes, not only is LinkUp the highest quality job site for job seekers (and it’s FREE!), but our jobs data is the ‘cleanest’ in the industry, entirely unencumbered by the noise that afflicts other jobs data sets.

With a 57% jump in new job listings in January and a 23% jump in total job listings in LinkUp’s job search engine last month, we are forecasting that the U.S. economy added 260,000 jobs in February. While our forecast is above the consensus estimate of job growth of 210,000 in February, we remain confident that tomorrow’s BLS report will surprise to the upside. In part, our forecast is based on the assumption that the Department of Labor has overestimated job growth for at least the past 3 months, and that tomorrow’s report will revise downward the numbers for December and January. If job growth in those months is not revised down, it is likely that tomorrow’s numbers will come in even higher than 260,000.

Unfortunately, LinkUp’s data for February indicates that March’s jobs report will not be as positive.

As background, LinkUp is the only job search engine on the web that indexes only jobs found on corporate websites throughout the U.S. Updated daily, LinkUp’s job search engine contains 860,000 job openings indexed from 22,000 company websites. Because LinkUp does not include any jobs sourced from job boards and does not allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site, the search engine does not include any garbage listings such as job scams, phishing posts, work-at-home-scams, or old listings. And because LinkUp only indexes jobs from a single source (the employer’s corporate website itself), there are no duplicate listings that pollute aggregator sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired. As a result of these entirely unique attributes, not only is LinkUp the highest quality job site for job seekers (and it’s FREE!), but our jobs data is the ‘cleanest’ in the industry, entirely unencumbered by the noise that afflicts other jobs data sets.

In February, new job listings on company websites throughout the country fell by 14% from January and total job listings dropped 4% from the prior month. 47 states saw a decline in new jobs and 27 saw a drop in total job listings.

In terms of jobs by category, new job listings fell by 17% and total jobs dropped 5% from January. Job openings on company websites fell in 20 of the 31 categories tracked by LinkUp, while total job openings declined in 14 of 31 categories. The healthcare sector was particularly hard hit, accounting for the vast majority of the fall-off in new job listings and 100% of the decline in total job listings.

So tomorrow, look for a very good jobs report but keep in mind that job growth in March will likely slow down a bit. Given the experience of last spring when the ‘green shoots’ everyone was talking about were annihilated by a massive dose of Round-Up in subsequent months, it’s tough to get too excited about a single month’s numbers. Hopefully this year we’ll see more robust and sustained job growth.

It’s hard to imagine that the muddled jobs picture could possibly get any murkier, but it is. Between ADP’s ‘Purge Effect,’ archaic seasonality adjustments (i.e., UPS and FedEx are still not fully accounted for in seasonal holiday hiring models), constant backwards revisions from the Department of Labor (a game ADP is now even playing), and a baffling initial December jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get an accurate sense of what is going on with the nation’s jobs picture. And while tomorrow’s jobs report may not provide much clarity, there is little doubt that based on LinkUp’s jobs data for January, the picture will not only get a lot clearer in February, everyone in the country (with the possible exception of Mitt Romney) will be ecstatic about what that picture looks like.

But before we get to February, I’ll start with our prediction for tomorrow’s BLS data for January. Based on LinkUp’s jobs data from December, we are forecasting that the U.S. economy added 20,000 jobs more than whatever the country added in December. I say that not to be cute, but because our model is based on the change in job growth or decline from the prior month. So if the BLS does not revise the numbers it reported for December (job growth of 200,000), then we predict that the economy added 220,000 jobs in January. However, if the BLS revises its December numbers down (as we believe they will and should), then our forecast is that January’s job growth will be 20,000 higher than whatever they revise it to. (Unfortunately, they will most likely revise December’s numbers again in the February Employment Situation report that will be released in March).

But far more critical than the January numbers, which will be pretty milquetoast in any event, will be the revisions to the November and December numbers. Based on LinkUp’s jobs data from Q4 ’11, there is no conceivable way that the U.S. economy added 300,000 full-time jobs in November and December. In fact, our model indicates that the U.S. economy actually lost 60,000 jobs in the final 2 months of the year.

If tomorrow’s BLS revisions reflect the fact that job growth has been negative or even significantly more muted than previously reported, I have to believe that the markets will respond accordingly. Having said that, however, the bearish sentiment will be short-lived given LinkUp’s jobs data for January. Based on the 50% increase in new job listings from company websites and the 19% gain in total job listings on company websites, combined with the fact that all 50 states saw increases in both new and total job listings, the BLS report for February will undoubtedly be the most positive employment report the country has seen in years.

For background purposes, LinkUp is the only job search engine on the web that indexes only jobs found on corporate websites throughout the U.S. Updated daily, LinkUp’s job search engine contains 830,000 job openings indexed from 22,000 company websites. Because LinkUp does not include any jobs sourced from job boards and does not allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site, the search engine does not include any garbage listings such as job scams, phishing posts, work-at-home-scams, or old listings. And because LinkUp only indexes jobs from a single source (the employer’s corporate website itself), there are no duplicate listings that pollute aggregator sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired. As a result of these entirely unique attributes, not only is LinkUp the highest quality job site for job seekers (and it’s FREE!), but our jobs data is the ‘cleanest’ in the industry, entirely unencumbered by the noise that afflicts other jobs data sets.

The jobs by category numbers in January were equally as positive, with 30 of 31 categories reporting increases in new job listings and all 31 categories reporting increases in total job openings.

Based on LinkUp’s fantastically positive jobs data from January, we are forecasting that the U.S. economy will add 150,000 more jobs in February than whatever the number is for January. At the moment, without accounting for any revisions that might take place tomorrow or next month, that number would be 370,000 jobs created in February.

And no matter what happens in tomorrow’s report with data from November, December, and January, it is absolutely certain that the jobs picture is finally starting to improve and that, furthermore, the rate of improvement is accelerating. I’d even go so far as to state that what we are seeing indicates that employment rolls will snap back faster than almost all the pundits are predicting, and that the end of the Great Recession might actually start coming into view. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Even Mitt would have to cheer for that.

Cheering for a positive jobs report from the Department of Labor these days is quite similar to cheering for the Minnesota Vikings of late; I’m always hopeful but there just isn’t much in the statistics to get too encouraged about. And unfortunately, the November jobs data published by LinkUp a month ago doesn’t bode well for this Friday’s BLS report for December. On a more positive note, however, our jobs data for December presents at least a glimmer of hope that the nation’s jobs picture might improve slightly in January.

I’ll start with November’s LinkUp jobs data that we use in our model to predict actual job growth for December. Given the fact that a job posted on a company’s website is the best leading indicator of a future hire, combined with the fact that the average job opening indexed by LinkUp remains open for 27 days, it is November’s job openings data that translates into the jobs numbers for December.

So in November, new job listings in LinkUp’s job search engine (which today includes 765,000 job listings indexed directly from 22,000 company websites) dropped 19% from the prior month while total job listings fell 6%. November was the 3rd consecutive month of declines in both new and total job openings, and the number of new job listings for the month was 50% fewer than January of 2011.

Given the steady decline of new and total job listings in Q4, we are forecasting that Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) at the Department of Labor will be far worse than consensus forecast which calls for job growth of 155,000 jobs in December. Equally as negative, we predict that the BLS will revise down their numbers for November of last year. A month ago, the government reported that 120,000 jobs were created in November, but our model indicates that, in fact, no net job growth occurred during the month. (For a much more extensive explanation of what we see as an inevitable downward revision, read my previous blog post here).

Combining the downward revision for November to zero and the LinkUp data for December, we are forecasting that the U.S. lost 100,000 jobs in December. I’ll hedge my bet a bit by stating that if BLS revises their November numbers to a lesser extent than what we anticipate, or not at all, the job growth for December will be 100,000 jobs fewer than whatever the final BLS number is for November. (As an aside, following the 11 initial monthly BLS jobs reports for 2011 issued so far, there have been 17 revisions, and they could still revise November again next month when they release their jobs report for January).

(The percentages for new and total jobs in LinkUp are different than what I reported earlier because the chart above is the average of the two job counts we capture for a given month – the first comparing it to the prior month and the second comparing it to the following month).

Two other charts provide additional cause for concern regarding this week’s jobs report that are worth highlighting. The first is the average number of job openings per company in the LinkUp job search engine, and the second is the total number of jobs in our job search engine since 2007 (which also includes a rolling 90-day average).

As is evident, both graphs clearly indicate that the positive (albeit still anemic) job growth that occurred in the first 3 quarters of 2011 has come to a screeching halt in Q4. Fortunately, our jobs data for December provides a glimmer of hope that things might improve just slightly in January.

In December, new job growth was flat from November, while total job growth declined by 2%. Neither data point provides much to get excited about, but they are definitely better than the numbers from the prior 3 months. The other positive news is that 23 states showed an increase in new job openings. (…funny quirk that states beginning with M showed particularly strong growth in new job listings: Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, and Montana).

In terms of jobs by category, new job openings rose 1% while total jobs declined by 1%. Like new jobs by state, roughly half of the job categories we track reported an increase in new job listings, led by Oil, Gas & Utilities, Maintenance & Repair, and Aerospace, Aviation, & Defense.

As background, LinkUp is the only job search engine on the web that indexes only jobs found on corporate websites throughout the U.S. Updated daily, LinkUp’s job search engine contains 765,000 job openings indexed from 22,000 company websites. Because LinkUp does not include any jobs sourced from job boards and does not allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site, the search engine does not include any garbage listings such as job scams, phishing posts, work-at-home-scams, or old listings. And because LinkUp only indexes jobs from a single source (the employer’s corporate website itself), there are no duplicate listings that pollute aggregator sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired. As a result of these entirely unique attributes, not only is LinkUp the highest quality job site for job seekers, but our jobs data is the ‘cleanest’ in the industry, entirely free of the noise that afflicts other jobs data sets.

So expect a bleak report on Friday, but rest assured that things will be a tad better in January. And who knows, maybe next year the Vikings will be back in the NFC finals. In the meantime, GO WILD!

There were a number of interesting aspects of today’s jobs report from the Department of Labor related to each of the following:

1) LinkUp’s forecasting model

2) Flaws in the government’s numbers

3) The state of the jobs picture in the U.S.

In reverse order, I’ll start with today’s report. The Employment Situation Report issued today reported that 120,000 nonfarm jobs were created in the U.S. in November, a number that includes a gain of 140,000 private sector jobs and a loss of 20,000 government jobs. With the decline of total unemployed Americans falling from 13.9 million to 13.3 million, combined with a drop in the labor-force participation rate and an increase of 133,000 ‘Marginally Attached, Discouraged’ people who have stopped looking for work and are therefore not counted as unemployed, the unemployment rate dropped from 9% to 8.6%. And finally, the BLS revised their jobs numbers for both September and October. The initial September jobs report claimed that 103,000 jobs were created in September. In October, BLS revised this number to 158,000, and this morning, it was revised again to a gain of 210,000 jobs in September, a 104% increase from the original number. Similarly, the BLS initially reported that 80,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in October, a number that today was revised up to 100,000.

It is the magnitude and frequency those revisions to the government’s numbers that point to serious flaws in the Department of Labor’s monthly jobs reports. Over the past 11 months, there have been 17 such revisions to the government’s numbers. I have no idea what happens between the initial report and the subsequent reports 30 and 60 days later, but  the initial release of the ‘Employment Situation’ report is now so consistently revised in future months as to have rendered itself virtually meaningless when it is first issued. Not only do those revisions make it difficult to accurately assess what is going on with the nation’s jobs picture, but they have wreaked havoc on our forecasting model at LinkUp.

The forecasting model we have built around the jobs data from our job search engine is essentially based on 2 factors: the change from one month to the next in new and total job openings indexed from 22,000 company websites throughout the country (which we obtain from our own job search engine), and the job gains or losses reported by the BLS for a given month. Without question, a job opening is the best leading indicator of a future hire, and we can use our data from a given month to predict how many jobs will be added or lost in the following month. And because the LinkUp search engine only indexes jobs from company websites, we have the cleanest data set of any jobs data set in the country. (There are no old jobs, no duplicate listings, and no job scams, phishing jobs, work-at-home garbage, or fraudulent posts. And certainly most appealing, we don’t have any job listings posted by mass-murderers). We then use the ups and downs of new and total job listings on LinkUp for a given month to predict the jobs gained or lost for the following month based on the reported job gains or losses reported by the BLS for the prior month. This is not as complicated as it might appear, and I’ll use the past few months to better explain how our model works.

In June 2011, new and total job listings on LinkUp rose by an average of 5.7% from May. For the past 6 months, the number of days that companies have kept a job listing on their corporate websites has averaged 27 days, so it makes sense that June’s increase in job openings indexed by our search engine would translate into job gains in July as reported by the Labor Department. And indeed, the BLS report for July reported that 127,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in July. But to forecast the positive 127,000 jobs in July, our model relies on the relative differences between the job gains or losses reported by the BLS from one month to the next. To predict what would happen in July, for example, we started with the 20,000 jobs that were gained in June (as reported by BLS). Based on our model, we estimated that given LinkUp’s 5.7% increase in job listings in June, the +20,000 in June would go up somewhere between 100,000 to 150,000 jobs, and it actually went up 107,000 to the 127,000 jobs reported by BLS. (That’s the delta BLS in the table above, and I wish I knew how to find/use the symbols font in WordPress so I didn’t have to spell out ‘delta’).

In July, new and total job listings on LinkUp declined by an average of 0.6%, so our model predicted that in August there would be a decrease from the +127,000 from July of somewhere between 0 to 100,000 jobs. The actual decrease was 23,000, as the BLS reported that in August the U.S. economy added 104,000 jobs. Job gains for August were positive, but size of the increase was 23,000 less than the size of the previous month’s increase, right in line with what our model predicted.

In August, new and total job listings on LinkUp rose by an average of 4%, so we predicted that job gains in September would rise by at least 100,000 from the 104,000 jobs gained in August. And again, our model worked perfectly as the BLS reported that the U.S. added 210,000 jobs in September (an increase of 106,000 from the 104,000 increase in August). Unfortunately, the 210,000 jobs gained in September were not reported until this morning, 60 days after the initial September jobs report issued on the first Friday of October. The initial jobs report for September claimed that the U.S. added only 103,000 jobs that month, a decrease of 1,000 jobs from the 104,000 jobs gained the prior month. So in that first week of October, it looked like our model was dead wrong. But then the September number was raised to 158,000 in early November, and our model looked a little better. This morning’s reported increase in job gains during September to 210,000 has proven that our prediction for September was flawless.

The 60-day revision for September by the BLS also proved that our October forecast was accurate as well. In September, new and total job listings on LinkUp declined by an average of 10.9%, so our model indicated that the 210,000 jobs gained in September would drop to a gain of only 70,000 jobs in October. The initial BLS report for October reported a gain of 80,000, but that number was revised to a gain of 100,000 jobs in this morning’s report. My guess is that that number will be revised down in next month’s report, but in any event, we were pretty close.

All of this is a long, and perhaps terribly muddy way of saying that the initial numbers reported by the BLS are horrendously unreliable of late and that our forecasting model is fantastically accurate. (And I can assure you that neither of those statements are made cavalierly). It is also an overly wordy preamble to the following statement: There is absolutely no way that the numbers reported this morning for November are accurate. The 10.1% decline we saw in LinkUp’s index in October indicates that the rate of increase in job gains should have declined in November by at least 100,000, meaning that even if one assumes that the +100,000 number for October will remain unchanged next month, there were zero jobs created in the U.S. in November. And because we are henceforth abandoning our reliance on the ‘noisy’ initial numbers reported by the BLS, that is going to be the starting point for our next forecast, not the flawed +120,000 reported by the BLS this morning.

Like Lyra’s brilliant but gradual mastery of the alethiometer, so too are we improving our use of the powerful jobs forecasting tool we’ve built.

Like clockwork every month, the pundits on Bloomberg and CNBC state definitively that THIS month’s jobs report is certainly the most widely anticipated report in recent memory. Unfortunately, I cannot argue their claim. With each passing month that the U.S. economy spends stuck in the quagmire of the 2nd Great Contraction, with its horrifically high unemployment, hope grows that it’s this next jobs report that might finally indicate that a jobs recovery is around the corner. Expectations are again high for a positive report tomorrow as economists are forecasting of a gain of 150,000 jobs in November. Some economists have even been scrambling to revise their forecasts upward in light of the positive report from ADP earlier this week. But like Charlie Brown perpetually believing that this time Lucy will actually let him kick the ball, tomorrow’s BLS report will again disappoint and the labor market will again be flat on its back in agony.

Based on LinkUp‘s jobs data from October, when new job listings on company websites throughout the U.S. declined 14.9% from September and total job listings dropped 5.3%, we are forecasting that the U.S. economy lost 70,000 jobs in November. (LinkUp is a job search engine that indexes job openings from thousands of company websites throughout the U.S.). Even more depressing, there’s a decent chance that the Department of Labor will revise their October jobs numbers downward in tomorrow’s report. The BLS initially reported a month ago that 80,000 jobs were created in October, but our forecasting model indicates that only 50,000 jobs were created in October given the weak jobs data from LinkUp in September. If that proves correct, then tomorrow’s report could be even more dismal.

LinkUp is the only job search engine on the web that indexes only jobs found on corporate websites throughout the U.S. Updated daily, LinkUp’s job search engine contains nearly 1,000,000 job openings indexed from roughly 25,000 company websites. Because LinkUp does not include any jobs sourced from job boards and does not allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site, the search engine does not include any garbage listings such as job scams, phishing posts, work-at-home-scams, or old listings. And because LinkUp only indexes jobs from a single source (the employer’s corporate website itself), there are no duplicate listings that pollute aggregator sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired. As a result of these entirely unique attributes, not only is LinkUp the highest quality job site for job seekers, but our jobs data is the ‘cleanest’ in the industry, entirely free of the noise that afflicts other jobs data sets.

In November, new job listings on company websites indexed by LinkUp dropped 19% and total job listings fell by 6%. (These percentage are slightly different than the table above which uses an average job count for October, while the table below uses a single, month-end job count for October. If you’re interested in a more detailed explanation, send me an email). Equally as grim, new job listings declined in 49 states and total job listings on company websites declined in 48 states.

In terms of jobs by category, the picture is equally as bleak. New job listings by category also dropped 19% and total job listings fell 6%. Similar to jobs by state table above, 29 of 31 job categories reported declines in new job listings, and 27 of 31 categories showed declines in total job openings.

Based on the LinkUp jobs data from October and November, we are also forecasting a negative number for December’s jobs report. Perhaps obvious but worth pointing out is the fact that a job listing posted on a company’s website in a given month indicates an intent to make a hire which would show up in the BLS numbers the following month, assuming that the job opening was filled. Job openings indexed by our job search engine have stayed open for an average of 27 days throughout 2011, so our jobs data for a given month is very highly correlated to BLS jobs reports for the following month.

Perhaps the only glimmer of hope in our numbers for the past 3 months is the fact that the rate of decline in total job openings on LinkUp, month-over-month, has steadily improved since September (see table at the top of this page). If that trend continues, we might even see a positive LinkUp number for total jobs in December, possibly indicating that the jobs picture might improve in Q1 2012. Or maybe that’s just Lucy goading us into a false sense of hope once again.

I’m not typically one who looks for or pays attention to signs from the cosmos, but it was a truly bizarre coincidence that as I was assembling the output from our jobs forecasting model and started to get a sense of what the picture looked like, Cat Stevens’ Trouble began playing on KEXP’s stream. (Seriously – 10:34AM CST, 11/2/11). Troubling, indeed, Friday’s jobs report from the Department of Labor will be “too shocking to see” for the markets. Based on the jobs data from LinkUp in September and October, Friday’s BLS report is going to be the worst since September of 2010 and November’s may be even more dismal.

In October, new job listings in LinkUp’s job search engine (which indexes nearly 1 million jobs from approximately 25,000 company websites throughout the U.S.) dropped 10% and total job listings on company websites fell 2%. Even more troubling, 47 states showed declines in new job listings and 40 states reported declines in total job listings.

In terms of jobs by category, new job listings fell by 9% and total job listings dropped 2% from September. 26 of the 31 job categories tracked by LinkUp showed declines in new jobs in October, while 19 of 31 job categories showed declines in total job listings.

LinkUp is the largest, fastest growing job search engine that only indexes jobs found on corporate websites throughout the U.S. Updated daily, LinkUp’s job search engine includes approximately 850,000 job openings indexed from over 22,000 company websites. Because LinkUp does not allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site, the search engine does not include any garbage listings such as job scams, phishing posts, work-at-home-scams, or old listings. And because LinkUp only indexes jobs from a single source (the employer’s corporate website itself), there are no duplicate listings that pollute aggregator sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired.

Based on LinkUp’s jobs data for the past two months (in September, new job listings declined by 10.9% and total job listings dropped 9.8%), we are forecasting that Friday’s jobs report will show that the U.S. economy lost 47,000 jobs during the month, far worse than the consensus estimate of job growth somewhere between 90,000 to 100,000 jobs. Based on the grim jobs numbers reported here for October, we are forecasting that the U.S. economy will shed another 217,000 jobs in November.

Already “shattered and tossed and worn,” the economy, the markets, and the condition of the average American household, not to mention the 14 million Americans currently unemployed, can hardly take any more misery. Unfortunately, more trouble is on the way.

Friday’s going to be a disaster.

It’s been a long time since we’ve created one of our many JobDig dog characters, but…