The numbers are frightening — down 40 percent, down 45 percent, down 30 percent.

Newspapers have seen a sharp decline in employment advertising revenue since the beginning of the year — some of them as much as 50 percent below the numbers from a year earlier — and the picture is not good.

Although we are finding that many newspapers are adding to their print classified advertising revenue though sales of their online services, employment advertising is vulnerable more than any other category to economic and demographic forces that are changing both newspaper business models and individuals’ interactions with media.

For instance, where are college graduates looking for jobs? Not in the newspaper.

A survey of the Class of 2001 by Vault.com (albeit, a biased source with a self-selected online pool of respondents) shows that 76 percent said they did not find print classifieds helpful. Where did they look? Company Web sites was the top choice (55 percent), followed by corporate recruiting events (45 percent), college career centers (44 percent) and online job boards (also 44 percent).

Even the Newspaper Association of America (presumably less biased than Vault.com, but still not a dispassionate observer) reported in its survey of changing media habits that 78 percent of the adults surveyed rely on daily and Sunday newspapers for employment advertising. That means nearly one-quarter of all those responding said they do not rely on the newspaper for employment ads.

How will newspapers recover their market share? They won’t. It’s as simple as that. Newspapers will never again have the market share in employment advertising that they had a few years ago.

Yet — and here’s the important paradox — they have the opportunity to increase their revenue in the employment advertising category, and to strengthen their ties to employers, job seekers and their local markets.

Unfortunately for dyed-in-the-wool “we’re a newspaper” types, it means newspapers have to do more than just publish their daily or weekly print editions.

To increase revenue in this important and lucrative category, newspapers will need to:

• Offer employers applicant tracking systems and multimedia posting systems, helping those advertisers with new ways to manage their hiring processes and to reach prospective employees.

• Partner with other media in their markets, like radio stations and television stations, or beat them as head-on competitors for employment dollars.

• Develop new media choices to offer employers, such as online job sites, separate weekly or monthly print employment publications, direct-mail programs, niche-employment products in fields like health care and technology, virtual and on-site career fairs and more.

• Improve, expand and better promote their existing print employment services.

Those are just a few of the steps newspapers will need to take to hang on to — and more importantly, increase — employment revenue.

The AIM Group and Classified Intelligence recently completed a three-month study of employment advertising, and found that new competitors are taking a permanent chunk out of revenue that used to belong to the local newspaper. Nearly three-quarters of all radio stations in the United States are now pursuing employment ad revenue.

Monster.com and technology niche site Dice.com are among the profitable online job boards, and literally thousands of other sites are chasing employment ad dollars. Unlike dot-coms that rely primarily on ad revenue and have thus seen their coffers dry up, employment sites have a different, and more effective, business model, generating revenue from employers.

All of these changes are part of the media revolution that’s under way now. Don’t make the mistake of thinking of it as an evolution, it’s much faster and more threatening than that.

If your newspaper has realized you’re going to have to become the local information source in your market, regardless of the medium or platform on which you deliver that information, you’re well on your way to overcoming short-term revenue losses. You’re in a position to expand your business in new ways during the next few years and beyond.

If employment revenue is important to you, and even at small weeklies it can represent a significant percentage of revenue, focus on it for the next few months by developing an aggressive program of new employment services.

Your business will benefit, both in the short term and for the foreseeable future.

Peter Zollman is founding principal of Advanced Interactive Media Group L.L.C., a consulting group that works with newspapers and other media companies to develop profitable interactive services. He can be reached at 407.788.2780 or via e-mail at pzollman@group-aim.com.

For more information about the report, “Help Wanted: Survivor’s Guide to Employment Advertising Revenue,” visit www.aimgroup.com/reports.