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Press Release / News
The Conference Board Reports Online Job Demand Down 66,700 in June
June 29, 2009
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The Conference Board Reports Online Job Demand Down 66,700 in June
Download a PDF of the press release (which includes a breakdown of the number of new online help wanted ads)and the technical notes .
Download the National Historical Table.
Online advertised vacancies declined 66,700 to 3,294,800 in June, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series (HWOL)™ released today. In the five months since January, online labor demand has dropped a relatively modest 71,000, in sharp contrast to the 1,200,000 decline in the previous five months from August 2008 to January 2009.
"We are not out of the woods yet, but job demand has definitely stabilized since January," said Gad Levanon, Senior Economist at The Conference Board. "Although there is some bounce in the monthly numbers, the number of online advertised vacancies has held steady in the last three months (up a modest 35,000) (Chart 1 on pdf). Across the U.S., it is an increasingly mixed picture with some states, like Florida and Georgia, showing some modest gains, others such as New York, North Carolina holding steady, and some, like California and Pennsylvania, yet to show real improvement." (Table A on pdf)
Regional and State Highlights
The number of advertised vacancies declined in June in all four regions of the country (Northeast, South, Midwest and West), ranging from a modest drop of 3,400 in the Southern region to 18,100 in the Northeast, 13,400 in the Midwest and 10,300 in the West. "The June data shows an almost even split between the number of states with increases (24) and the number with declines (26)," said Levanon. "But there are clear signs that the employers are advertising again for workers and in some states the trend over the last few months has improved."
The June decrease of 3,400 in the Southern region reflected the contrasting movement of some of the largest states. Of these states, Florida experienced a sizeable gain, 9,200, and was followed by Georgia (2,900), North Carolina (900) and Virginia (100). Texas and Maryland both experienced declines, -5,100 and -1,400 respectively. Among the smaller states in the South, West Virginia (4,100), Kentucky (3,700) and Arkansas (1,600) increased in June. Oklahoma (-1,100) and Louisiana (-800) both declined in June and continued their relative flat trends since January. (Table A and Table 3 on pdf)
In the Northeast, all four of the largest states posted declines in June. New York showing the largest decrease (5,300), however looking at the trend since January, job demand in New York is basically flat. New Jersey, which was down 2,600 in June, has experienced a modest increase of 1,700 over the last four months. Pennsylvania (-2,700) and Massachusetts (-2,200) decreased modestly in June, and both states continue their downward trend. Among the states with smaller populations in the region, Maine dropped a modest 100 in June and overall has shown a flat trend since January.
In the West, changes in labor demand among the four most populous states in June were split between increases in Arizona and Colorado and decreases in California and Washington. Arizona and Colorado increased 4,600 and 3,400 respectively and thereby returned to their levels at the beginning of the year, although still 40 percent below their levels in June 2008. California was down 15,900 in June and continued its downward trend. Washington reversed only a small number of last month's gains with a decline of 1,300 jobs. Among the states with smaller populations, Hawaii and New Mexico are two states in the West where the trend has been steady since January. In June, Hawaii rose 800 while New Mexico was up 1,000.
In the Midwest, Wisconsin declined by 4,300, Minnesota decreased by 2,300, and Missouri declined by 1,800. Illinois experienced the largest increase (1,900) and was followed by Michigan (800) and Ohio (700). Ohio continues to be the Midwest state where drops in labor demand have leveled off over the last couple of months.
The Supply/Demand rate for the U.S. in May (the latest month for which unemployment numbers are available) was at 4.32, down slightly from 4.40 in April but still indicating that there are more than 4 unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy. Among the states, the highest Supply/Demand rate is in Michigan (9.95), or nearly 10 unemployed people for every advertised vacancy. Other states where there are over 6 unemployed for every advertised vacancy include Indiana (7.73), Kentucky (7.33), Ohio (6.54), North Carolina (6.49), and Mississippi (6.30). North Dakota (1.41) and Nebraska (1.44) have some of the lowest rates. (Table 4 on pdf).
It should be noted 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 (see Occupational Highlights section).
OCCUPATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
Almost half of the 66,700 monthly decline in June in online advertised vacancies reflects decreases in Computer and Mathematical Science (-19,900), Sales and Related (-11,700) occupations. Advertised vacancies in both of these occupations are over 30 percent below levels of a year ago. Other large occupation groups with declines in June were Health Practitioners and Technical occupations (-10,400), and Architecture and Engineering (-10,000). (Table B & Table 7 on pdf)
While online advertised vacancies in most of these broad occupational categories continue to run well below year ago levels, there are a few exceptions. Art, design, entertainment, sports and media posted 98,200 advertised vacancies in June, exactly in line with the June 2008 level. Healthcare support occupations at 97,800 were slightly above (600) last year's level.
Supply/Demand rates indicated that, among the occupations with the largest number of online advertised vacancies, there is a significant difference in the number of unemployed seeking positions in these occupations. Among the top ten occupations advertised online, there were more vacancies than unemployed people seeking positions for healthcare practitioners (0.4) and computer and mathematical science (0.4). On the other hand, in sales and related occupations, there were about four people seeking jobs in this field for every online advertised vacancy (4.3) and there were nearly five unemployed looking for work in office and administrative support positions for every advertised opening (4.7). For management positions, there were almost two people looking for every advertised opening (1.6).
METRO AREA HIGHLIGHTS
In June, only 3 of the 52 metropolitan areas for which data are reported separately posted over-the-year increases in the number of online advertised vacancies. Honolulu, with 13,700 ads, was well above last year's level (27.4 percent). Providence, with 19,700, gained 1,200 advertised vacancies compared to last year. Virginia Beach, with 21,300, gained 200. Among the three metro areas with the largest numbers of advertised vacancies, the New York and the Los Angeles metro areas were about 25 percent below June 2008 levels. Washington, D.C. was down 14,300, or 8.8 percent, from last year's level. (Table C & Table 5 on pdf).
The number of unemployed exceeded the number of advertised vacancies in all of the 52 metro areas for which information is reported separately. Washington, D.C. and Salt Lake City were the locations with the most favorable supply/demand rates, where the number of unemployed looking for work was only slightly larger than the number of advertised vacancies. (Table C) On the other hand, metro areas in which the respective number of unemployed is substantially above the number of online advertised vacancies include Riverside, CA, where there are nearly 10 unemployed people for every advertised vacancy (9.7), Detroit (9.6), Portland (5.9), Sacramento (5.6), Chicago (5.4), Miami (5.3) and Los Angeles (5.0). Supply/Demand rate data are for April 2009, the latest month for which unemployment data for local areas are available. (Table C & Table 6).
Note: New Seasonal Factors for all Seasonally Adjusted Series
With the release of June 2009 data, new seasonal adjustment factors have been applied to the national, regional, state and occupation time series. In addition there was an adjustment to the May 2009 data as a result of a program improvement.
With the release of May 2009 data, the occupational data in Table B and Table 7 are now seasonally adjusted. Unemployment data for these tables are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey and are seasonally adjusted by The Conference Board in order to provide comparable data to calculate Supply/Demand rates for occupations. The Supply/Demand rate is the number of unemployed in the occupation divided by the number of advertised vacancies in the occupation.
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 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.
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 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
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
THESE DATA ARE FOR ANALYSIS PURPOSES ONLY. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION, PUBLISHING, DATABASING, OR PUBLIC POSTING WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION.
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