Online Help Wanted Ads Surge 24 Percent

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Total online job ads, surpassing 4 million, were up 16% in April compared with March - and up 24% from April 2006 - according to The Conference Board’s Help-Wanted OnLine (HWOL) Data Series, MarketingCharts writes.

The most advertised job vacancies online by type of occupation were management (476,200) and healthcare practitioner/technical (374,700).

Total online job ads reached 4,365,000 in April, an increase of 610,600 from March (the mid-March to mid-April, however, included three more days than the previous period), according to the Conference Board  (via Editor & Publisher).

Those include 2,898,000 new ads that did not appear in March, plus reposted ads. New ads rose 26 percent year over year.

The fastest year-over-year growth was in the West South Central and West North Central regions, up 41 percent and 35 percent, respectively. The slowest growth was in New England, at 6 percent.

State data:

• Massachusetts posted the highest ads rate for the fifth consecutive month.
• Virginia and Utah tied for first as the states with the lowest supply/demand rate.
• Online advertised vacancies in California, which has the largest labor force, totaled 722,600 in April, followed by Texas (351,000), New York (316,400), Florida (288,100) and Illinois (202,500).
• Massachusetts posted 5.1 vacancies for every 100 persons in the state labor force, the highest rate in the nation.
• Alaska (4.97) and Nevada (4.94) were close behind in the number of advertised vacancies when adjusted for the size of the state labor force.

Occupation data:

• Management and Business/Financial occupations account for more than 1/3 of online ads in some regions.
• The occupations with the most advertised online vacancies were Management (476,200) and Healthcare practitioner and technical (374,700) - both, on average, among the highest-paying jobs.
• Engineering occupations are in high demand in San Jose
• There were176,700 online total advertised vacancies for engineering jobs.
• In terms of volume of engineering job ads, California (33,100), Texas (14,600), and New York (13,800) were the top states.
• Metro areas with the largest number of online ads for engineers included New York (14,300), Los Angeles (9,800), and Washington, D.C. (9,400).

Geographic data:

• San Jose ranks first with 7.18 ads per 100 persons in the labor force.
• Salt Lake City has the lowest supply/demand ratio in the nation.
• The number of unemployed persons looking for work was less than the number of advertised vacancies in 13 of the 52 metro areas for which data is reported separately.
• The top-ranking areas were Salt Lake City, Washington D.C., San Francisco, San Jose, and Austin, and San Diego, New Orleans and Las Vegas were just below the top ten areas.
• 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 April, with 321,000 and 262,500, respectively.
• The top two metro areas in terms of advertised vacancies per 100 persons in the local labor force were San Jose (7.18) and San Francisco (6.80), followed by Austin (6.13), and Washington D.C. (5.95).

The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series measures the number of new, first-time online jobs posted 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 Help-Wanted Advertising Index of print ads (published since 1951), the 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.