The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine^® (HWOL)

Online Labor Demand down 150,200 in May

05 Jun. 2013

• May drop brings average lost to 29,600/month for the first five months of 2013
• Labor demand over the year remains nearly unchanged for many professional occupations
• NOTE: April 2013 data were revised to adjust for the removal of a job board (see p. 7)

Download the National Historical Table.

Online advertised vacancies fell 150,200, or 3 percent, in May to 4,827,600 in The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine® (HWOL) Data Series released today. In the first five months of 2013 labor demand has dropped an average of 29,600 per month. The Supply/Demand rate stands at 2.3 unemployed for each vacancy. In April there were 6.7 million more unemployed than the number of advertised vacancies, down from 11.9 million at the end of the recession in June 2009.

“The upward trend in labor demand since the end of the recession seems to have stalled in 2013,” said June Shelp, Vice President of The Conference Board. “The 2013 levels for labor demand are still well above the pre-recession high of April 2007, but the small 2013 pullback of 29,000 per month in labor demand indicates that the national economy is still not out of the woods.”

Many of the professional occupations (management, computers, business and finance) were weak in 2013. A few bright spots included gains for production and construction workers and a surprisingly large rise (up 29 percent so far in 2013) for workers in legal occupations (See Table 7, page 14).

 

The release schedule, national historic table and technical notes to this series are available on The Conference Board website, http://www.conference-board.org/data/helpwantedonline.cfm. The historical series for States and the 52 largest MSA is available from Haver Analytics. The underlying data for The Conference Board HWOL is collected by Wanted Technologies Corporation.

 

REGIONAL AND STATE HIGHLIGHTS

• May losses in 19 of the 20 largest States (all but Colorado)
• 44 of the 50 States decreased in May

May Changes for States

In May, online labor demand dropped in 44 of the 50 States in the U.S. (Table 3). States that increased were Utah, Colorado, Montana, West Virginia, Oregon, and Mississippi. Over sixty percent (32 of the 50 States) are above last May’s levels.

The largest drop in online labor demand was in the South, down 57,800 in May with about one third of the decrease (19,300) in Texas, the largest State in the region. Florida, the second largest State, dropped 9,600. Virginia fell by 9,100; Georgia, by 7,400; North Carolina, by 6,200; and Maryland, by 5,000. Among the smaller States, Louisiana lost 2,300; Tennessee lost 2,100; Arkansas lost 400; and South Carolina lost 200 (Table 3).

Online labor demand in the West fell 32,600 in May (Table A), with California, the largest state, responsible for most of the decrease (29,500). Arizona lost 9,500 and Washington fell 4,500. Colorado posted a gain of 8,300 and reached its HWOL series high of 116,500. Among the smaller Western States, Nevada fell 900 in May while Oregon gained 800 and Utah rose 10,600 to its series high.

Online labor demand in the Midwest dropped 29,900 in May. Michigan posted the largest decrease, 6,900. Wisconsin fell by 3,100; Minnesota, by 1,800; Illinois, by 1,400; Missouri, by 1,200; and Ohio, by 900. Among the smaller Midwest States in May, Kansas fell by 3,300; Indiana, by 2,600; North Dakota, by 2,000.

Online labor demand in the Northeast decreased by 24,100 in May with Pennsylvania dropping 7,000. Massachusetts lost 6,100; New York fell 3,000; and New Jersey decreased by 1,100. Among the smaller States in the Northeast, May labor demand decreased by 3,200 in Connecticut; by 1,400 in Maine; by 1,000 in New Hampshire; and by 200 in Rhode Island (Table 3).

The Supply/Demand rates for the States are for April 2013, the latest month available for state unemployment data. The number of advertised vacancies exceeded the number of unemployed only in North Dakota, where the Supply/Demand rate was 0.64. The State with the highest Supply/Demand rate was Mississippi (4.79), where there were close to five unemployed workers for each online advertised vacancy. Note that the Supply/Demand rate only provides a measure of relative tightness of the individual State labor markets and does not suggest that the occupations of the unemployed directly align with the occupations of the advertised vacancies.

 

METRO AREA HIGHLIGHTS

• In May 36 of the 52 largest metro areas posted decreases in labor demand while 14 posted increases and 2 (Cincinnati and Louisville) remained constant
• 21 of the largest metro areas have supply/demand rates below 2, indicating that there are fewer than two unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy

Metro Area Changes

In May, 15 of the 20 largest MSAs and 36 of the 52 metropolitan areas for which data are reported separately posted decreases in the number of advertised vacancies (Table B and Table 5). May gains among the 20 largest metro areas included San Francisco (up 4,000) and Denver (400) in the West; Cleveland (600) and Chicago (500) in the Midwest; and Baltimore (600) in the South (Table B).

Twenty-one of the MSAs reported separately had Supply/Demand rates in April 2013 (the latest available data for unemployment) lower than 2, indicating there are fewer than two unemployed for every advertised vacancy (See Table 6). Washington, DC continues to have the most favorable Supply/Demand rate (1.13) with about one advertised vacancy for every unemployed worker. Salt Lake City (1.14), Oklahoma City (1.27), Minneapolis–St. Paul (1.27), San Jose (1.30), Seattle–Tacoma (1.31), Boston (1.33), Austin (1.43), and San Francisco (1.44) had the next lowest Supply/Demand rates.

Metro areas in which the number of unemployed is substantially above the number of online advertised vacancies included Riverside, CA, with over six unemployed workers for every advertised vacancy (6.25), Las Vegas (3.86), Los Angeles (3.45), and Sacramento (3.44) (See Table 6).

Since the end of the recession in June 2009, a number of the large metro areas have posted gains of at least 100 percent in labor demand. These are Cleveland (up 131 percent), Charlotte (130 percent), Denver (130 percent), Portland (129 percent), Columbus (126 percent), Nashville (120 percent), Birmingham (118 percent), Detroit (113 percent), Minneapolis-St. Paul (110 percent), San Francisco (108 percent), Phoenix (105 percent), Houston (102 percent), Seattle-Tacoma (102 percent), and Louisville (100 percent).

 

OCCUPATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

• 17 of the 22 major groups in the Standard Occupational Classifications (SOC) declined in May
• All of the top-10 SOC groups decreased (Table C)

Occupational Changes for the Month of May

Among the largest occupational groups, Computer and Mathematical Science occupations dropped 21,000 in May to 588,200, led by a decrease in demand for Computer Systems Analysts, Network and Computer Systems Administrators, Web Developers, and Applications Software Developers. Sales and Related occupations decreased by 20,200 to 575,200, driven by decreased demand for First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Retail Sales Workers, Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, and Retail Salespeople. Healthcare Practitioners and Technical occupations fell 20,100 to 563,400, largely due to lower demand for Registered Nurses. Management occupations dropped 15,200 to 469,700, largely due to drops in Food Service Managers and Marketing Managers. Business and Financial Operations occupations fell 14,200 to 299,800 based on lower demand for Management Analysts and Training and Development Specialists (Table 7).

 

PROGRAM NOTES

HWOL Data Revision

With the release of May 2013 data, April 2013 data were revised to adjust for the removal of a job board that was re-classified as out-of-scope. The removal of the job board has resulted in a small non-economic level drop of approximately –65,000 between the March and April seasonally adjusted levels. The May 2013 levels, over-the-month changes, and analysis contained in this May 2013 press release were unaffected by the revision.

HWOL is now available on Haver Analytics

Over 3,000 of the key HWOL press release time series are exclusively available on Haver Analytics. The available time series include the geographic and occupational series for levels and rates for both Total Ads and New Ads; in addition to the seasonally adjusted series, many of the unadjusted series are also available. The geographic detail includes: U.S., 9 Regions, 50 States, 52 MSAs (largest metro areas); the occupational detail includes: U.S. (2-digit SOC), States (1-digit SOC) and MSAs (1-digit SOC).

For more information about the Help Wanted OnLine database delivered via Haver Analytics, please email sales@haver.com or navigate to http://www.haver.com/contact.html. For HWOL data for detailed geographic areas and occupations not in the press release, please contact June.Shelp@conference-board.org or Jeanne.Shu@conference-board.org.

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The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine® Data Series (HWOL) measures the number of new, first-time online jobs and jobs reposted from the previous month for over 16,000 Internet job boards, corporate boards and smaller job sites that serve niche markets and smaller geographic areas.

Like The Conference Board’s long-running Help Wanted Advertising Index of print ads (which was published for over 55 years and discontinued in July 2008), the HWOL series measures help wanted advertising, i.e. labor demand.  The HWOL data series began in May 2005. With the September 2008 release, HWOL began providing seasonally adjusted data for the U.S., the nine Census regions and the 50 States. Seasonally adjusted data for occupations were provided beginning with the May 2009 release, and seasonally adjusted data for the 52 largest metropolitan areas began with the February 2012 release.

People using this data are urged to review the information on the database and methodology available on The Conference Board website and contact us with questions and comments. Background information and technical notes and discussion of revisions to the series are available at:
http://www.conference-board.org/data/helpwantedonline.cfm.

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 Board

The Conference Board is a global, independent business membership and research association working in the public interest. Our mission is unique: To provide the world’s leading organizations with the practical knowledge they need to improve their performance and better serve society. The Conference Board is a non-advocacy, not-for-profit entity holding 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt status in the United States.

 

WANTED Technologies Corporation

WANTED is a leading supplier of real-time business intelligence solutions for the talent marketplace. Using technology to gather data from corporate career sites and online job boards, WANTED builds products to help our users make better human capital decisions faster. Users of our products include corporate human resources departments, market analysts and employment services firms as well as the federal, state and local labor market analysts that use HWOL. For more information, please visit:
www.wantedanalytics.com.

 

HAVER ANALYTICS®

Haver Analytics is the premier provider of time series data for the Global Strategy and Research community. Haver Analytics was founded in 1978 as a consulting firm and today provides the highest quality data and software for industry professionals. Haver provides products and services to clients in financial services, government, academia and various industry groups from consulting to manufacturing. From more information please see:
http://www.haver.com/contact.html.

 

THE CONFERENCE BOARD HELP-WANTED ONLINE DATA SERIES™
Release Dates for 2013

July 3, 2013 (data for Jun 2013)
July 31, 2013 (data for Jul 2013)
September 4, 2013 (data for Aug 2013)
October 2, 2013 (data for Sep 2013)
October 30, 2013 (data for Oct 2013)
December 4, 2013 (data for Nov 2013)

The next release is scheduled for Wednesday, July 3 at 10:00 AM ET.

For further information contact:

THESE DATA ARE FOR ANALYSIS PURPOSES ONLY. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION, PUBLISHING, DATABASING, OR PUBLIC POSTING WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION.