In another sign the employment picture is getting better, San Francisco, San Diego, Riverside, and Los Angeles show at least two months of gains in a survey of online managerial job postings. Previously www.OC180NEWS reported the first back to back monthly employment gains in Orange County in two years. Employment also jumped back in Los Angeles County in Feburary, see related article.

So, where is the hiring?
Nationally, the top 5 cities for managerial recruitment activity remain Washington, D.C., Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and Baltimore, and the cities with the lowest hiring activity are Tampa, Louisville, Detroit, Memphis and Riverside.

Tracking per capita job postings nationally and for each of 30 major metropolitan areas, the 2010 CareerCast.com/JobSerf Employment Index rose to 90.4 in March, climbing 7.1 points since February. It was the second month in a row that the Index, which measures managerial recruitment activity online, showed headway in reducing unemployment. Nationally, March 2010 per capita hiring levels were more than double what they were a year ago (90.4 vs. 44.1).

“It appears that a real rebound in hiring has started, but with the unemployment rate still at 9.7%, the battle for most of the unemployed is far from over,” says Jay Martin, COO, JobSerf.

“Hiring of management-level executives usually reflects a longer-term view and means businesses are thinking more positively about the future," says Tony Lee, publisher, CareerCast.com. “Now that managerial recruitment activity overall is on the rise, the rest of the job market should follow.”

This survey tracks four California cities—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Diego. San Francisco is the number 3 city in national per capita job postings and Riverside is at the bottom of the stack. San Diego and Los Angeles are in between.

The spread between per capita hiring in San Francisco verses in Riverside is huge—there are about 6 times more managerial job openings per capita in San Francisco than in Riverside. But, all of the four California cities tracked by the study reported gains in the most recent data. And, for all four California cities, it was at least the second month in a row with job gains.

For San Francisco, the March gain was 10%. The bay area has improved every month since December 09, for a total gain since then of 25.7%. This means that during March 2010, there were 25.7% more online job postings of managerial jobs in the bay area than there were in December 2009. It also means there are more job postings on a per capita basis in San Francisco, than the other three California cities track by the survey, or than any other city nationally, besides Washington D.C., and Boston.

The second ranked California city is San Diego. While the growth in San Diego since December has been 18%, and it has improved every month since then, total job postings per capita are much fewer than in the bay area.

Prospects are even fewer in Los Angeles. LA has eked out growth in only the last two months. But it has been at a slow rate, and jobs in LA fell from December to January. While the gains in March put LA 6% ahead of its December level, LA’s ranking against the other cities in the survey fell. Back in December, Los Angeles was ranked 21 out of the 30 cities tracked by the survey. By March, it had slipped to 25 out of 30.

As bad as Los Angeles is, it’s much better than Riverside, which has been at the bottom of the list forever. Riverside had very small gains in both February and March, and it was unchanged in January.

Click here to read the full report or for more job related information.