NEW YORK, Jul 10, 2002 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The New York Times Job Market Confidence Index dropped 2.9 points in June to 106.8 from 109.7 in May.

The Confidence Index measures the perceptions of employers and job seekers in the greater New York metropolitan area.

June's Current Conditions measure of the Index, which looks at respondents' perceptions of the current state of the job market, dropped to 131.7 from 135.7 in May. The Expectations measure of the Index, which considers respondents' expectations concerning the future of the job market in six months, dropped to 99.9 from 101.6, the lowest recorded since the beginning of the index in February. For these results, February served as the base month, with values equal to 100.0.

This is the latest in a series of reports issued by the Job Market Research team based on ongoing original research of trends and practices in employment in the greater New York metropolitan area. Key findings for June include:

- Employers' expectations of the number of new hires they plan to make during the next six months dropped from an average of five in May to 3.9 in June.
- Job vacancies also dropped from an average of 3.3 to 2.6.
- The percentage of employers who expect to hire for newly created positions during the next six months dropped to 23 percent from 35 percent.
- Workload declined during the last month, with the percentage of employed job seekers who said that their current workload was "very high" dropping from 49 percent to 41 percent.
- The average number of offers received by job seekers since they started looking for a job dropped to 2.5 from 3.

About Job Market

Job Market, the print and online recruitment services offering of The New York Times, includes one of the Internet's leading career sites in the New York metropolitan area, providing employers and job seekers with comprehensive resources to streamline the job recruitment process. Job Market appears in The New York Times every Sunday and is accessible all week at NYTimes.com, where job seekers can find career-related Times articles, exhaustive company research, a resume database and valuable career resources.

Each week, The New York Times Job Market issues research on industry trends and workplace practices affecting employers and job seekers in the metropolitan New York region. On a monthly basis, The New York Times Job Market releases the findings of its Confidence Index that track the future outlook for job recruitment in the metro New York area over the coming six-month period. Copies of Job Market research reports are available upon request at NYTimes.com/jobmarket. New York-based Beta Research Corporation, via random telephone interviews, independently conducts The New York Times Job Market research.

NOTE: Job Market research is not affiliated with the editorial operations of The New York Times newspaper and does not reflect the views of the newspaper or its journalists. Source all references to Job Market research as: The New York Times Job Market.

About The New York Times Company

The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), a leading media company with 2001 revenues of $3.0 billion, publishes The New York Times, The Boston Globe and 16 other newspapers; owns eight network-affiliated television stations and two New York radio stations; and has more than 40 Web sites, including NYTimes.com and Boston.com. In 2002 the Company was ranked No. 1 in the publishing industry in Fortune's list of America's Most Admired Companies. Among all 530 companies on the list, the Company ranked No. 1 in quality of products/services and No. 1 in social responsibility. The Company's core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

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