Where are the jobs?

One of my favorite analysts Charles Payne from Wall Street Strategies had a quote today:

"On the topic of interest rates, we could be getting set up for another round of Fed speculation when the next jobs report is released. This morning, the initial jobless claims report indicated that only 302,000 folks filed for unemployment benefits last week. This number is extremely low, and coupled with the trend over the last six weeks, one has to believe we are going to see a huge jobs report real soon. By the way, I don't buy this notion that so many people are out of the jobs market, and they simply aren't looking for jobs according to the pundits. Instead, I think people are working in so many non-traditional ways that it isn't being captured on traditional radars."

I believe Charles hit the nail in the head with this one. Many people in America today are finding work in non-traditional ways and the old metrics and systems that the government uses do not capture them. For starters, many people now work from home running their own businesses. These people earn their living and do not claim unemployment benefits. One example are the numerous number of people running successful online stores through eBay.

There is no doubt in my mind that this trend will continue as the traditional paradigm of working for large corporations (usually for life) shifts to a more individualistic paradigm. This trend is further accelerated by the mass layoffs we have witnessed in many industries.

How can we benefit from this trend from an investment point of view? I believe online advertising will continue to grow at phenomenal rates. The publicly traded companies standing to benefit the most at this moment are Google, Yahoo and eBay. Their advertising revenues are increasing every quarter.

Have you noticed that Google's revenues have almost caught up to Yahoos at over 3 billion! Given that Yahoo is still increasing revenues, this illustrates exactly the trend that I'm talking about.