Special Report: Global Financial Crisis

    SAN FRANCISCO, March 9 (Xinhua) -- With the unemployment rate rising, online job search sites in the United States are booming in popularity as people desperately look for work, a U.S. newspaper reported on Monday.

    Laid-off or fearing they will be, job-seekers are scouring the Internet for job openings, driving traffic to job search sites up 51 percent in January from the same month a year ago, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing market research data.

    Despite the boom in traffic, many job sites are taking a financial hit as employers make less paid postings in these days of hiring freezes and layoffs.

    Indeed.com, a major job board, found that postings for the accounting industry in January fell 53 percent from a year earlier, with postings for technology industry dropping 43 percent.

    The sectors that held up the best were health care and education, which saw postings down 8 percent and 9 percent respectively.

    Downturn in job listings won't reverse course until employers see the pain tapering off, Gautam Godhwani, chief executive of job search engine Simply Hired, was quoted as saying.

    According to figures released last week by the U.S. Labor Department, unemployment rate in the country jumped to 8.1 percent in February, the highest level since late 1983, as employers slashed 651,000 jobs in the month.