Monster jobs index drops to near 3-year low

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Online job recruitment activity plunged in October to its lowest level in nearly three years in the latest signal of a deep job slump gripping the U.S. economy, Monster Worldwide Inc said on Thursday.

The online job advertising firm's index of labor market conditions dropped 10 points to 150 in October. The drop ended two months of modest increases and marks its lowest reading since December 2005.

It was down 38 points, or about 20 percent, from the same month last year.

The decline "suggests that U.S. businesses are scaling back their recruitment efforts due to uncertainty surrounding the global financial crisis and current economic conditions," said Jesse Harriott, vice president of research at Monster Worldwide. "However, there are still pockets of elevated demand for workers in areas such as mining, health care and government, where online job opportunities remain above levels seen at this time last year."

The Monster Worldwide data comes a day before the U.S. Labor Department releases the government's official snapshot of the job market. Analysts and economists polled by Reuters are looking for U.S. employers to have cut 200,000 jobs in October. That would mark the ninth straight month of job losses and the biggest one-month drop in five-and-a-half years.

The unemployment rate is forecast to have risen to 6.3 percent in October from 6.1 percent in September.

Year to date, the U.S. economy has lost about 760,000 jobs and if Friday's report comes in near expectations, the year's cumulative job losses could approach the 1 million mark.

(Reporting by Daniel Burns; Editing by Jan Paschal)