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Economic News
Florida's Online Job Demand Up 5,700 in May, The Conference Board Reports
June 9, 2009
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Florida's Online Job Demand Up 5,700 in May, The Conference Board Reports
Download a PDF of the press release and the technical notes .
Florida's online job demand rose 5,700 in May to 164,500, and over the last four months is up by 10,500, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine Data Series (HWOL)™. At the national level, job demand continued to drop through April, but in May was up by 250,000, marking the first increase in six months and the largest monthly increase in two years.
"Florida continues to show small improvements, and this is a welcome sign," said June Shelp, Vice President of The Conference Board. Florida is one of a handful of states where labor demand has shown some small but positive gains since January. Other states with positive upward trends in advertised vacancies since January include New Jersey, Hawaii, Georgia, Arkansas and West Virginia. Labor demand typically leads the trends in both unemployment and employment, and the recently released Florida unemployment and employment data for April seem to reflect some of the 4-month improvement which has been seen in Florida's labor demand. While there are some continued positive signs for labor demand across the nation, the likely outlook for the nation is for unemployment to continue to rise and employment to fall at more modest levels throughout the summer.
The gap between Florida's unemployed and the available jobs remains wide, and in April (the latest month for which unemployment data are available) there were over five unemployed individuals for every advertised vacancy (Chart 1 on pdf).
This is in sharp contrast to the situation in Florida before the economic downturn. In October 2006, the Supply/Demand rate for Florida was 1.1, meaning there was basically one unemployed individual for each advertised vacancy. The April Supply/Demand rate of 5.6 in Florida remains above the national rate of 4.4. "Even with the increase in advertised vacancies, the challenge will be to quickly align the unemployed with the new job opportunities." (Table A on pdf).
State/MSA Highlights
Most of Florida's metro areas continued to experience growth in labor demand over the past four months after steep losses in December 2008 and January 2009 during the financial market turmoil. A number of metro areas in Florida are now showing over-the-year increases in labor demand, including Cape Coral, Fort Walton, Pensacola and Punta Gorda. Areas that continue to run below year-ago levels include Miami with 49,000 online advertised vacancies in May, a level that is 46 percent below year-ago levels. Tallahassee (-26.1 percent), Gainsville (-20.8 percent) and Jacksonville (-20.1 percent) are also below year-ago levels.
Florida's MSAs also show a great degree of variation in their supply/demand rates, which provide an indication of the degree of difficulty an unemployed individual will experience in finding employment opportunities. Metro areas in the best shape with low S/D rates around 2.0 - indicating there are about 2 unemployed individuals for each advertised vacancy - include Tallahassee (2.45), Gainesville (2.19) and Fort Walton (2.17). MSAs having the highest S/D rates include Port St. Lucie (9.72) and Lakeland (7.37). The S/D rate for the Miami metro area was 5.55, indicating there were over 5 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy. (Table A on pdf)
Occupational Highlights
Labor Demand continues to remain well below year-ago levels for most occupations.
In Florida, the most widely advertised occupations are Healthcare Practitioner & Technical jobs and Sales and Related positions. These occupations account for 18 percent and 16 percent of the online classified ads respectively. Healthcare Practitioners and Technical occupations are in high demand in Miami and Tampa.
Highlights of the National Picture
Nationally, online advertised vacancies were 3,367,300 in May — a rise of 250,000 and the first monthly increase since the modest gain of 21,000 in October 2008 and the largest since October 2006. May increases were widespread across the nation with 43 of the 50 states posting gains.
The full national release with geographic detail for the nation, the 9 Census regions, 50 States and 52 large metropolitan areas as well as occupational detail is available on The Conference Board website here at www.conference-board.org/economics/helpwantedOnline.cfm.
PROGRAM NOTES
The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series™ 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 was published for over 55 years and discontinued in July 2008 and continues to be available for research), 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.
With the October 1, 2008 release, HWOL began providing seasonally adjusted data for the U.S., the 9 Census regions and 50 States. Seasonally adjusted data for occupations is provided beginning with the June 1, 2009 release. This data series, for which the earliest data is May 2005, continues to publish not seasonally adjusted data for the 52 large metropolitan areas, but it is The Conference Board's intent to provide seasonally adjusted data for large metro areas in the future.
People using this data are urged to review the information on the database and methodology available on The Conference Board 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 here at: www.conference-board.org/economics/helpwantedOnline.cfm.
The underlying data for this series is provided by Wanted Technologies Corporation. Additional information on the Bureau of Labor Statistics data used in this release can be found on the BLS website, www.bls.gov.
ABOUT 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. www.conference-board.org.
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: www.wantedtech.com.
THE CONFERENCE BOARD U.S. HELP-WANTED ONLINE™ DATA SERIES
Release Dates for 2009
June 2009 data — Monday, June 29
July 2009 data — Monday, August 3
August 2009 data — Monday, August 31
September 2009 data — Monday, September 28
October 2009 data — Monday, November 2
November 2009 data — Wednesday, December 2*
December 2009 data — Wednesday, January 6*
*Wednesday release due to holidays or data availability.
For further information contact:
Frank Tortorici
(1) 212 339 0231
f.tortorici@conference-board.org
Gad Levanon
1 212 339 0317
gad.levanon@conference-board.org
June Shelp
1 212 339 0369
june.shelp@conference-board.org
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