On the city of Ottawa website, there are Excel lists of the monthly web hits on their pages. These lists include hits on which pages specifically and the number of visits.

Looking through these lists, I found it interesting that with the exception of March and August, in 2013 most of the hits on the City of Ottawa website have been on their job listing pages.

In both March and August of 2013, jobs were second behind parks and recreation pages. One would imagine these sudden spikes in parks and recreation are a matter of kids being out of school on Spring and Summer break, and parents trying to find fun activities for the little ones.

Another trend my research brought up was a somewhat steady decline in the number of hits to the job listings as the year goes on, as the following graph shows.

I wasn’t able to find any data yet for previous years, but I would be interested in finding out if this decline is something that happens every year. If so, what factors play a hand in the decline? Why are so many people searching for jobs in January, but not in October?

I obviously expected fluctuating numbers, but not such a steady decline, especially into September and October. I expected a hike as kids go back to school and parents go back to focusing on themselves a little more.

Again, I would be very interested in finding out what the data shows for years past, and find out what affects Canadians and their decision to look for work, as well as maybe find out how many job listings, on average, per month are posted. Maybe there are fewer jobs as the year progresses and that’s why there are fewer hits.

The job market is always something people are buzzing about. It would make for an interesting article, I think.