America's Job Bank Will Cease Operations

America's Job Bank (AJB), which has connected job seekers to national job openings and to the state job banks since 1995, will cease operations on July 1. Career expert and author Joyce Lain Kennedy has a good explanation of the "logic" behind the decision - "Despite an attempt by a group of state employment administrators to persuade congressional leaders to step in and stop it, the Labor Department says that 'maintaining and improving the site no longer makes sense given that AJB duplicates what is already available in the private sector.' Critics argue that the closure is the result of political lobbying in an example of privatizing government services to benefit commercial interests."

Site visitors will be sent to a list of State Job Banks and to a list of private sector job banks and portals. "The private sector job bank" is the relevant part of this. Employers could post jobs free on America's Job Bank. In fact, 47,488 have been listed today and there are almost 2.2 million jobs currently listed on America's Job Bank.

America's Job Exchange, which describes itself as the replacement for AJB, will provide free job postings for a year to employers who sign up by June 1. After that it will be fee-based, as are the other private sector job banks. Given the volume of job postings on AJB, that's a lot of potential revenue that will benefit those commercial interests.