NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 2003--The New York Times Job Market Confidence Index was essentially unchanged with a slight 0.4 point increase to 92.8 in March from 92.4 in February.

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

March's Current Conditions measure of the Index, which looks at respondents' perceptions of the current state of the job market, rose to 96.7 in March from 91.3 in February. The Expectations measure of the Index, which considers respondents' expectations concerning the future of the job market in six months, dropped to 93.9 in March from 95.2 in February. For these results, February 2002 served as the base month, with values equal to 100.0.

"There are some signs that employers are creating a few more job openings and there are growing signs that employers are expecting that they will need more staff to handle their workload in the future," said Carl Haacke, economist for the Job Market Confidence Index. "At the same time, the general mood of both employers and job seekers about the job market is fairly depressed."

Key findings for March include:

• The percentage of employers who said they had vacancies rose slightly to 35.8 percent in March from 31.9 percent in February.
• The percentage of employers who said that they expect to have "too few staff to handle their workload" in six months increased for the third month in a row to 25.6 in March from 19.6 in January.
• However, employers see job availability as extremely low, with the percentage of employers who said that jobs available now are "plentiful" at just 15.3 percent, the lowest since the survey began in February 2002.
• The percentage of job seekers who said that there will be "fewer" jobs available in six months rose to 40.7 percent in
  March from 35.6 percent in February.

For the March results, 501 hiring managers and 332 job seekers were interviewed. Interviews are conducted via telephone with random samples of job seekers and hiring managers in the New York metropolitan area. The survey results for each month include responses obtained over the previous two-month period.

About Job Market

Job Market, the print and online recruitment services offering of The New York Times, provides employers and job seekers with comprehensive resources to streamline the recruitment process. Job Market appears in The New York Times every Sunday and is updated throughout the week at nytimes.com, where job seekers can find job listings, career-related Times articles, exhaustive company research, a resume database and valuable career resources.

Through the newspaper's national audience, which includes 4.2 million weekday readers and 5.0 million Sunday readers as well as the 1.5 million readers who visit nytimes.com every day, The New York Times Job Market reaches a marketplace of high-quality professionals actively seeking new job opportunities or considering career moves.

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 its Job Market Confidence Index. The Index tracks current conditions for recruitment in the New York metro area as well as future outlook for the coming six months. Copies of Job Market research reports are available upon request or 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.

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CONTACT: The New York Times Company Diane McNulty, 212/556-5244 E-mail: mcnuldc@nytimes.com Al Leach, 212/556-4483 E-mail: promo8@nytimes.com SOURCE: The New York Times Company