• by Masha Geller , September 5, 2003

What did people do online during the last few weeks of summer? Looks like quite a few were looking for a new job.

Nielsen//NetRatings reported recently that home web users flocked to career sites during the week ending August 24th, with the U.S. Department of Labor coming out as the most popular destination

Traffic to the U.S. Dept. of Labor jumped 55% to 289,000 unique visitors from home, as compared to 187,000 visitors during the previous week. More than one million unique visitors accessed Yahoo! HotJobs, a 32% week over week increase. AOL Careers & Work surged 18%, drawing 223,000 surfers. Monster attracted more than 2.4 million unique visitors, up 12% from the previous week. Rounding out the top five fastest growing career sites was CareerBuilder, which increased by 4% to 697,000 unique visitors.

"The end of summer marks the end of vacation season. University students are heading back to school and looking for part-time jobs, while others who have been putting off the job search are refocusing their energy," said Jarvis Mak, director and senior analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.

Elsewhere on the web, people were looking for friends and football.

Online member community, Friendster.com spiked 46%, at home, for the week ending August 24th, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Forty-three percent of the site's 341,000 unique visitors signed in to view photos of members in their friend network. And, traffic to the NFL Internet Network has been climbing steadily as football season gets under way. During an eight-week period, traffic skyrocketed 183%, at home, attracting more than two million unique visitors for the week ending August 24th, as compared to 713,000 for the week ending July 6th. Fans flocked online to visit their favorite team site and to research and draft NFL players for fantasy football leagues.