Newswise — In November there were 4,072,600 online advertised vacancies, a decrease of 89,100 or -2.1% from the October level, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Seriesâ„¢ (HWOL) released today. Nationally, online advertised vacancies were up (9.7%) over the year (November'06-November'07). There were 2.65 advertised vacancies online for every 100 persons in the labor force in November.
"The growth in the number of online ads has slowed in the last two months and while year over year growth is still positive, the pace has definitely slowed," said Gad Levanon, Economist at The Conference Board. "In addition to trimming their hiring intentions, in recent months businesses have also been pulling back on investments in capital goods. At the same time, American consumers are feeling more pessimistic about job growth and the U.S. economy in general, according to The Conference Board Consumer Confidence survey, released last week. These data suggest that we are not likely to see any significant boost in employment through the early months of 2008."
THE NATIONAL - REGIONAL PICTURE
In November, 2,808,300 of the 4,072,600 unduplicated online advertised vacancies were new ads that did not appear in October, while the remainders are reposted ads from the previous month. The 2.1 percent decrease in total ads was caused primarily by a 2.3 percent decrease in new ads. Despite these declines, over-the-year (November'06 " November'07) total ads and new ads rose 9.7 percent and 17.2 percent, respectively.
The national decline in advertised vacancies between October and November '07 reflected a lower volume of ads in seven of the nine Census regions. The majority of the regions saw a slight decline from last month but remained positive from last year's time. Over-the-year (November '06 — November '07), seven of the nine regions continued to show a gain in labor demand. Two exceptions to this were again New England and the Pacific region.
"New England and the Pacific are also among the weakest regions according to The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index," said Levanon.
The November figures reported in the Help-Wanted OnLine Data Seriesâ„¢ reflect the sum of the number of unduplicated online job ads for each day from mid-October to mid-November. This new series, which includes data from April 2005, does not have sufficient history to allow for seasonally adjusted monthly data.
STATE HIGHLIGHTS* Alaska posts the highest ads rate in the country for the third month in a row* Montana leads the nation with the lowest supply/demand rate for the sixth month in a rowAlaska posted 4.81 vacancies for every 100 persons in the state labor force, the highest rate in the nation, for the third month in a row. Nevada (4.54) and Colorado (4.36) were close behind in the number of advertised vacancies when adjusted for the size of the state labor force. Other states in the top five included Delaware (4.28) and Massachusetts (4.18).
Online advertised vacancies in California, the state with the largest labor force in the nation, totaled 585,500 in November. The volume of online advertised vacancies in California was significantly above the next highest states, Texas (363,500), New York (289,500) and Florida (244,300). "Although one cannot infer that the occupation or geographic location of unemployed persons matches the occupation or geographic location of the vacancies, looking at the number of unemployed in relation to the number of advertised vacancies provides an indication of available job opportunities for the unemployed," said Levanon. Using the latest unemployment data available from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and computing the supply/demand ratio (unemployed/advertised vacancies), the states with the most favorable (e.g., lowest) supply/demand rates included Montana (0.60), Wyoming (0.65), Idaho (0.68), and North Dakota (0.69). There were 15 states where the supply/demand rate was less than 1.0, indicating that the number of unemployed workers was fewer than the number of online job ads. For the nation as a whole, the comparable supply/demand rate for October was 1.63, indicating that the number of unemployed persons exceeded the number of online advertised vacancies.States where the number of unemployed persons looking for work significantly exceeded the number of online advertised demand included Mississippi (4.56) and Michigan (3.98), Kentucky (2.95) and Arkansas (2.79). OCCUPATIONAL FOCUS
* Over 300,000 ads posted for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations in October.* Management and Business/Financial occupations account for more than 30% of online ads in New York and Illinois.
"Many jobs in high demand are also, on average, among the highest paying occupations," said Levanon. Healthcare practitioners and technical workers (301,200) and management positions (280,900) continue to be top occupations with a significant number of ads posted online. According to the latest federal hourly wage data, wages average above $44 an hour for management positions and about $30 an hour for healthcare practitioners and technicians. Also in high demand are office and administrative support (247,500), business and financial occupations (244,600), and computer and mathematical (225,500) occupations.
METRO AREAS HIGHLIGHTS* Austin ranks first with 6.17 ads per 100 persons in the labor force.* Austin also has the lowest supply/demand ratio in the nation.
The top metro areas in November with around six advertised vacancies per 100 persons in the local labor force included Austin (6.17), San Jose (5.80) and Milwaukee (5.65). The number of unemployed persons looking for work was fewer than the number of advertised vacancies in 16 of the 52, or almost one-third, of the metro areas for which data are reported separately. Cities across the nation where the number of advertised vacancies are plentiful in relation to the number of unemployed included Austin; Salt Lake City; Washington, D.C.; Denver; Phoenix and New Orleans.
Two of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, New York and Los Angeles, were first and second in the absolute volume of advertised job vacancies in November, with 296,200 and 213,700, respectively. Note: The Help Wanted Online Data Seriesâ„¢ is a new developmental program with research and evaluation studies ongoing in a number of areas. The comparisons in the attached tables between total ads and total unemployed at the various geographic levels are overall counts and it cannot be inferred that the detailed occupation or geographic location of the unemployed matches the occupation or geographic location of the vacancy. Additionally, there may be differences in the way the unemployed person describes his occupation versus the way an employer may describe the same job. The Conference Board welcomes interested user feedback on this important new data set but also urges users to exercise caution in the analysis and interpretation of the data.
PROGRAM NOTES
The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Seriesâ„¢ measures the number of new, first-time online jobs and jobs reposted from the previous month on more than 1,200 major Internet job boards and smaller job boards that serve niche markets and smaller geographic areas.
Like The Conference Board's long running Help-Wanted Advertising Index of print ads (which has been published since 1951), the new online series is not a direct measure of job vacancies. The level of ads in both print and online may change for reasons not related to overall job demand.
The Conference Board, as a standard practice with new data series, considers the estimates in The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Seriesâ„¢ to be developmental. As a not-for-profit business research organization, The Conference Board is publishing the early years of this series for use by the media, analysts, researchers and the business community. Persons using this data are urged to review the information on the database and methodology available on our website and contact the economists listed at the top of this release with questions and comments.
Background information and technical notes on this new series are available at: http://www.conference-board.org/economics/helpwantedOnline.cfm. The underlying data for this series is provided by Wanted Technologies Corporation. CareerBuilder.com provides financial support for the series.
Additional information on the Bureau of Labor Statistics data used in this release can be found on the BLS website, www.bls.gov.
The Conference BoardNon-partisan and not-for-profit, The Conference Board is the world's leading business membership and research organization. The Conference Board produces The Consumer Confidence Index and the Leading Economic Indicators for the U.S. and other major nations. These barometers can have a major impact on the financial markets. The Conference Board also produces a wide range of authoritative reports on corporate governance and ethics, human resources and diversity, executive compensation and corporate citizenship. Our conference and council programs bring together more than 10,000 senior executives each year to share insights and learn from each other. Visit The Conference Board's award-winning website at http://www.conference-board.org.
CareerBuilder.comCareerBuilder.com is the nation's largest online job site with more than 20 million unique visitors and over 1 million jobs. The company offers a vast online and print network to help job seekers connect with employers. CareerBuilder.com powers the career centers for more than 550 partners that include 165 newspapers and leading portals such as MSN and America Online. For more information about CareerBuilder.com products and services, visit http://www.careerbuilder.com.
WANTED Technologies Corporation.WANTED is a leading supplier of real-time sales and business intelligence solutions for the media classified and recruitment industries. Using its proprietary On-Demand data mining, lead generation and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) integrated technologies, WANTED aggregates real-time data from thousands of online job boards, real estate and newspaper sites, as well as corporate Web sites on a daily basis.
WANTED's data is used to optimize sales and to implement marketing strategies within the classified ad departments of major media organizations, as well as by staffing firms, advertising agencies and human resources specialists. For more information, please visit: http://www.wantedtech.com.
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