How do I pick a job search niche? Use BLS.
1 Jul
One of the most common pre-sales questions I receive for the 300K Page Job Search In-a-Box is: How do I pick a job search niche? (That question’s followed with: how do I pick a domain name?)
Like with any site, picking a niche requires research. In the case of job search, your research should focus on employment data. And, what better source for that than the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)?
A couple years ago, BLS published their projections of employment by major industry sector. Check it here: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t02.htm
For each industry/vertical, BLS captured the employment numbers for 1998, 2008, and 2018; and then the average annual growth rates between 1998-2008 and 2008-2018. We want to focus on the 2008 and 2018 numbers. In honing in on an attractive vertical, there are 2 things to look for:
- Large employment value – A large employment base means there’s a large target market for our job search site. I’d say anything greater than 10 million is a winner, which leaves us with:
- Manufacturing
- Retail
- Professional services
- Healthcare / social assistance
- Leisure / hospitality
- State and local government
- Financial services (this comes in close at 8.7MM employees) […]











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