plus 1, Jobs Go Up, Monster Goes Down - Wall Street Journal

Jobs Go Up, Monster Goes Down - Wall Street Journal

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By Jonathan Cheng

This morning's closely-watched jobs report was not exactly a monster, adding 192,000 jobs when most everyone else was looking for 200,000 or more. But on a day of deep selling across the markets, the worst performer on the S&P 500 is jobs site Monster Worldwide, down 7% at last glance after a downgrade from William Blair analyst Timothy McHugh.

Mr. McHugh's qualms range from the industry-wide (weak hiring) to the company-specific (losing market share to coming-to-IPO LinkedIn and niche players like Dice, up 0.3% today). Another overhang is Washington's budget food fight. U.S. government hiring accounts for about 15% of the U.S. careers business, Mr. McHugh estimates, and Monster's own proprietary employment index shows public admin jobs falling 25% year-on-year last month at a time when further federal belt-tightening is on the way.

On the flipside, MKM Partners analyst Eric Handler reaffirmed Monster's "buy" recommendation, calling expectations sufficiently low that Monster need not post "heroic numbers" for the stock to rebound nicely. Mr. Handler's also a bit more sanguine on the employment market, and says that Monster is only growing in importance among human resource managers, according to MKM's numbers.

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Our View: The main reason we support ROP is jobs - Merced Sun-Star

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Not everybody should go to college. This is not academic heresy. It's not a putdown of local students. It's not a slam of UC Merced or Merced.

It's plain old common sense.

Some youngsters aren't cut out for campus. They wither on the scholastic vine. Their talents and interest lie in other areas.

They belong in fields and jobs and occupations that don't require a college degree, where they can thrive.

That's why we applaud the Regional Occupational Program's efforts to help students gain skills necessary in a workplace geared toward practical steps to get a job.

Sun-Star reporter Doane Yawger's story Thursday said 2,427 students were enrolled in ROP classes as of mid-December, 125 of them adults and the rest in high school.

Students at Atwater, Buhach Colony, Merced, Golden Valley, Yosemite-Independence, Livingston, Chowchilla, Delhi, Dos Palos, Gustine, Hilmar, Le Grand and Los Banos high schools participate in ROP.

His story quoted Steve Gomes, Merced County superintendent of schools, who noted that in an increasingly competitive global economy, career technical education skills are more important than they ever have been.

We agree.

And so do some of main business leaders.

The Sun-Star's series "Poor People" published in 2008 declared: "Some of the county's business leaders advocate the modern equivalent of trade schools so that high school grads can learn a well-paying vocation. Mike Gallo of Gallo Ranches and Loren Gonella of Century 21 Gonella both believe vocational programs would increase employment. 'We manage 600 pieces of property,' Gonella says, 'and we could use those kind of people every day.' "

When every single educational moving part of the budget is under siege by state and local ax-wielders, we'd like to recommend that funds for career technical education skills be left alone.

These programs offer the best chance for the most practical solution to our economic problems: jobs.

Editorials are the opinion of the Merced Sun-Star editorial board. Members of the editorial board include Publisher Debra Kuykendall, Executive Editor Mike Tharp, Editorial Page Editor Keith Jones, Online Editor Brandon Bowers and visiting editor Mary Hofmann.

(This editorial originated with our sister newspaper The Sacramento Bee.)