The Jobcentre Plus' website, part of the Department for Work and Pensions, handled over 120 million job searches between April and September this year, peaking at a record 5.4 million in a single week during the early half of September.(i) The website remains the UK's number one recruitment site accounting for over 13% of the overall recruitment market.(ii) It is also now ranked the 57th most popular website in the whole of the UK.

Although the summer months are typically a quiet time for jobhunting, the Jobcentre Plus site received an average of 1.5 million user visits each week- almost double the average traffic received during the same period in 2005. The average number of job searches conducted has also risen by nearly a million since last year increasing from an average of 3.9 million between April and September 2005 to 4.8 million in the same 6 months of 2006. (iii)

It is not only jobseekers who have been busy this summer; employers too have been placing more and more vacancies online. Jobcentre Plus' employer-facing Internet service, Employer Direct online, receives an average of 10,000 vacancies each week and now accounts for 25% of all Jobcentre Plus' weekly vacancies, up 3% since the first quarter of 2006. Launched in May 2005, it is a free online service enabling employers to post and manage their vacancies via the Jobcentre Plus website.

Lesley Strathie, Chief Executive, Jobcentre Plus said: "The Jobcentre Plus site has handled a steady increase in traffic over the last few months despite the traditional seasonal dip in recruitment activity. It indicates the growing trend amongst both jobseekers and employers to use the Internet to find and fill jobs. It shows also the increasing significance of Jobcentre Plus in the UK recruitment market. Our website provides a vital channel in helping large numbers of people back into work and we hope this recent increase in activity is a sign of continued growth to come."

Jobcentre Plus' website provides help for customers in finding jobs as well as information on benefits, training and how to apply for a job. Employers can find information on placing a vacancy with Jobcentre Plus and other services available to them. There is also useful information for organisations that work or are interested in working with Jobcentre Plus.

Notes to editor
Glossary of terms

• A User Visit (or User Session) is a visit to a website by a user from log on to log off. Visits can last from a few seconds to hours. User Visits are not the same as Users. Some users will visit sites once, others repeatedly and during a single session more than one user might participate from the same PC.
  
• A Job Search is recorded each time a user clicks the Search for Jobs button on the job search area of the Jobcentre Plus website.

Sources for statistics
(i) Full table of statistics April - September 2006:

(ii) Hitwise monthly report for jobcentreplus.gov.uk - August 2006. Jobcentre Plus was ranked 1st amongst UK employment and training websites with 13.14% of the overall market share ahead of Total Jobs (4.66%) and Monster (3.97%). Jobcentre Plus was ranked 57th of 166,424 websites in the UK in August 2006. In August 2005 it was ranked 61st of a total 198,203 websites in the UK.

Hitwise is a leading online competitive intelligence service. Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISP's around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behaviour of 25 million Internet users.

(iii) Full table of statistics April - September 2005:

For further information please contact:
Suzanne Colley, DWP press office on 0207 238 0750
Melissa Annetts, Siobhan Gilheany or Carolyn Gater, Fishburn Hedges on 020 7839 4321

About Jobcentre Plus
Jobcentre Plus, part of the Department for Work and Pensions, brings together employment and benefit services for people of working age and is a key element in the Government's objectives to help people based on 'Work for those who can, support for those who cannot'. It provides a professional and modern service to meet the diverse needs of employers and those seeking work, including:

• Personal advisers to provide practical support and advice to help those in need find and keep work, including training provision and benefits guidance
  
• A dedicated service to support employers in filling their vacancies quickly and successfully
  
• Ability to place and search for jobs both online and over the phone (via Jobpoints and through Jobseeker Direct and Employer Direct).
  
• Swift, secure and professional access to benefits for those entitled to them.

Customers can access Jobcentre Plus services through around 1,000 locations across Great Britain, including over 800 newly refurbished Jobcentre Plus offices. Touch-screen terminals and Customer Access Phones are also available in a further 120 sites such as libraries and local authority premises. Jobcentre Plus works with over 275,000 employers to place 17,000 people into work every week. Over 400,000 jobs are listed each week on its website and more than 4m job search requests are received, making it the number one UK recruitment website.

For further information on the services that Jobcentre Plus provides employers and people of working age explore this site.