Have you ever submitted your resume online only to never hear from the company? Or maybe you’ve been interviewing and haven’t heard about the status of your candidacy.

According to a CareerBuilder survey, approximately 75 percent of jobseekers who applied to jobs last year using a variety of sources didn’t end up hearing from the potential employer. Read more

Private-sector employment increased by 198,000 jobs in February, and by 215,000 in January, payroll giant ADP announced today.

While February’s gains are the latest in a string of monthly job additions that stretches back years, the numbers aren’t as large as they could be, as some estimates say that the recession wiped out nearly 8 million jobs. Adding 200,000 jobs per month would mean we’d be back to pre-recession levels in…more than 3 years. Who’s got the time?

ADP, citing a Moody’s report, called the job market “sturdy,” however, as the report beat analysts’ expectations.

Private-sector employment rose by 192,000 in January, payroll giant ADP says.

That’s slightly higher than the revised job growth for December (185,000 jobs) but well in line with the sort of numbers we’ve been seeing month in and month out for what feels like forever.

ADP says that most of the job growth took place at small companies (1-49 employees), while the largest companies (+1,000 employees) even shed some jobs.

The biggest gains among industries tracked by ADP were in professional/business services and trade/transportation/utilities.

Here’s a slightly encouraging chart. Hopefully the official U.S. numbers on Friday will be just as encouraging.

This just in: If you live in L.A. or Tucson, it’s likely you’ll have a better shot at landing employment this year than Boulder or Milwaukee.

According to CareerBliss’ new report, 2013 Best and Worst Cities to Find a Job, happiness data was examined. In addition to factoring in employment trends and job openings, happiness data was collected via employee reviews of their employer. Read more

U.S. News & World Report ranked the 100 Best Jobs of 2013 based on a compilation of important information such as employment opportunity, salary, work-life balance and of course, job security.

Although the top of the list seems full of tech and healthcare positions, we noticed a few media-friendly jobs made the top 100.

As for the overall score, it was calculated by looking at several facets and weights associated with each one: Year growth volume (10%), year growth percentage (10%), median salary (30%), employment rate (20%), future job prospects (20%), stress level (5%) and work-life balance (5%).     Read more

Despite an ADP report to the contrary, the Bureau of Labor Statistics today said that Hurricane Sandy did not “substantively impact the national employment and unemployment estimates for November.”

That and 146,000 jobs were added to the economy, an unimpressive gain.

The good news: The unemployment rate edged down to 7.7 percent as companies hired in retail, health care, and hospitality. And for the first time we recall, also in motion picture and sound recording (+15,000 jobs). Hey, that’s kind of like media.

The bad news: 12 million people are still unemployed, plus another 8.2 million underemployed and just under 1 million discouraged workers–those who were not officially counted as unemployed because they had given up looking for work.

Two days ago, payroll giant ADP projected a smaller increase in private-sector jobs (118,000) and said that that number would have been much, much higher if not for Sandy: “Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on the job market in November, slicing an estimated 86,000 jobs from payrolls,” a Moodys analyst said in the report. “The manufacturing, retailing, leisure and hospitality, and temporary help industries were hit particularly hard by the storm.”

Not only that, but when offices are closed, they can’t report data, leading to an artificially lower estimate.

But the Bureau says that on that second point, you can rest easy: “Our survey response rates in the affected states were within normal ranges. Our analysis suggests that Hurricane Sandy did not substantively impact the national employment and unemployment estimates for November.”

We kind of wish the response rates were lower. That would mean more jobs. Ah well.

Unemployment rates were lower in September in 44 states and the District of Columbia, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced today.

The five states where unemployment increased were Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Mississippi, and New Mexico. (Maine’s unemployment rate remained static.)

Meanwhile, only two states, California and Nevada, had unemployment rates higher than 9.9 percent.

Texas, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia added a total of 52,000 jobs in the past month.

The following image shows state-by-state unemployment rates for September; darker shading means a higher unemployment rate.

Analysts and Wall Street types rejoiced today as the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the unemployment rate has dropped below 8 percent for the first time in almost four years and that the economy added 114,000 jobs.

The increase is the smallest in three months but it was enough to lower the unemployment rate from the 8.1-8.3 percent rate it was hovering at for the first eight months of the year.

Now, it’s not all good news. The number of people “working part-time for economic reasons” (a fancy way for the BLS to describe underemployed people who would rather have a full-time job) rose from 8 million in August to 8.6 million in September. And the number of people not working but not counted as unemployed remained steady at 2.5 million–that includes people who dropped out of the workforce for school or family responsibilities, but also includes 802,000 people who just gave up looking for work.

The industries that added the most jobs were healthcare (+44,000), transportation and warehousing (+17,000) and financial activities (+13,000).

The national unemployment rate may be over 8 percent, but if you’re a Web designer, you’re among elevated company–only 3 percent of Web designers are unemployed, according to Workforce.com.

Donna Farrugia, executive director of staffing firm the Creative Group, told Workforce she has seen an “unreal” increase in the amount of job orders for Web designers. Demand for these professionals hit a 13-year high during the second quarter of 2012, she said. And according to the government’s Occupational Outlook Handbook, openings for Web designers are expected to increase another 13 percent through 2020.

To land one of these plum positions, assuming you’ve got the skills, you’ll need a killer portfolio. Lori Richmond, director of creative services for XO Group (formerly TheKnot), says she looks for portfolios that display not just professional work, but side businesses, “like if they have a craft business on the side or a photography blog. All of that gives us insight on their level of design sensibility. Their outside interest piques our interest.”

Richmond added that she likes to try out designers as freelancers before offering them a full-time gig. In fact, her two most recent hires were former freelancers. “I would much rather someone come in and freelance for us for a day or a couple of weeks and get a sense of what they can do,” she told Workforce. “Personality, professionalism and being responsive to feedback is really important.”

By 2020, half of the workforce at Fortune 100 companies could be temporary/contractors/freelancers, according to a University of Minnesota professor.

And the temp industry has regained 87 percent of the jobs it lost during the recession, says U.S. News & World Report. Private employers as a whole have only recovered half the jobs shed in the recession.

Temporary hiring is supposed to precede full-time hiring, as cautious employers get back into hiring with employees who are easy to let go in case of another sudden downturn. But so far what we’ve seen during this “recovery” has not followed the usual pattern.

“The current economic situation is also one of unusual uncertainty. Temporary staffing may continue to see steady growth as employers put off hiring in the face of weak global demand and fiscal uncertainty at home,” as U.S. News put it.

Overall, temp workers make up 2.3 percent of the nation’s workforce, up from half a percent 30 years ago.

Professor of sociology Arne Kalleberg told U.S. News that the change was significant, despite the small numbers. (That is, after all, a more than 400 percent increase.) “I can’t see the end of it,” he said.

There are about 2.5 million temporary and contract workers in the U.S.