Companies hiring the most right now

Though unemployment fell to 7.8% in September, the job market isn’t recovering fast enough for the 12.1 million Americans who remain jobless. However, data just released by Simply Hired does offer them a glimpse of hope.

Simply Hired, a search engine that hosts more than 8 million listings from job boards, company sites and the web, found that some of America’s biggest and brightest companies are looking to fill thousands of position. We put together a list of the 10 firms doing the heaviest hiring right now.

The picture we offer does not reflect a precise number of available jobs. An opening can be listed in more than one place and can remain online for a time after it’s filled. Nevertheless, the numbers do offer a strong, broad gauge of which companies are expanding and taking on the most new workers.

AT&T has a total of 35,479 job openings, making it the No. 1 company for hiring right now. The telecommunications giant is looking to fill retail positions, sales spots, and management jobs, among others.

1. More from TODAY.com
   1. Cops stand in for fallen officer at daughter's kindergarten graduation
      

      Tatum Raetz graduated from kindergarten this week, just three days after her police officer father was killed while invest...

   2. Time warp: Official portrait places Queen Elizabeth in imagined scene
   3. Student charged for same-sex relations with minor
   4. Video of Susan Powell reveals she feared for her life
   5. Big gas savings! Kmart goes for giggles again

With 23,769 listings, Family Dollar Stores is No. 2. The North Carolina-based price-point retail chain is looking for store managers, customer service representatives, and human resources coordinators, among others.

Rounding out the top three is Toys “R” Us. Headquartered in New Jersey, the toy retailer sells merchandise in more than 875 Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us stores. The company is currently looking for 17,073 new employees. Like the other retailers, Toys “R” Us is bringing on thousands of part-time seasonal workers right now, to prepare for the holidays.

“Looking at the top 10 hiring companies in the nation, we can clearly see that seasonal hiring is in full swing as a number of retail companies top the list,” says Gautam Godhwani, co-founder and chief executive of Simply Hired. “We’ve seen growth in retail job openings for the past couple months; September alone experienced a 16 percent increase from the previous month,” he adds. “The National Retail Federation agrees that companies are hiring more employees this season compared with last year, up to 625,000 workers. This increase in hiring continues to slowly increase consumer confidence as the nation emerges from the recession.”

About half of the 13,979 Best Buy (No. 5) postings are for part-time, seasonal, contract or temporary positions, likely due to holiday hiring. A good chunk of Macy’s openings also fall into those categories, but not quite as many. Of the retailers 10,543 listings, about 4,000 are not full-time.

However, not all of these companies are looking for so many seasonal workers. For instance, a majority of the 14,233 job openings at Kindred Healthcare (No. 4) are full-time positions.  The same goes for Bank of America (No. 7), which is currently looking to fill 10,211 spots, and No. 8 Starbucks, which has 9,832 openings.

More on Forbes:

• Full List: 10 Companies Hiring The Most Right now
• The Best Small Companies In America
• Top-Paying Virtual Jobs
• 10 Hot Companies Hiring Like Crazy
• The 15 Best Companies To Work For