At least somebody is seeing their company grow in these recessionary times: membership of social networking sites is soaring as people look to make contacts for potential jobs elsewhere.

Traffic on the world’s top professional Web networks has surged since the financial crisis started to make headlines, with the top player, the privately held LinkedIn, notching 25 percent more registrations in September than forecast.

“Nobody has ever seen anything like this before,” said Kevin Eyres, head of LinkedIn’s operations in Europe. “Now we are growing by almost one new user each second.”

Membership on LinkedIn has jumped to more than 31 million from 18 million at the start of the year, growing fastest in the financial services, media, education and technology fields, Eyres said.

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