Online-Advertised Job Vacancies Dip in October

In October there were 4,161,700 online-advertised job vacancies nationally, a decrease of 108,300, or 2.5 percent, from September - and up 8.6 percent from October 2006, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series (HWOL), writes sister site MarketingCharts. There were 2.71 advertised vacancies online for every 100 persons in the labor force in October.

“The year-on-year growth rate of online advertised vacancies, while still positive, has slowed in recent months, and the 8.6 percent increase is the smallest since this series began in May 2005,” said Gad Levanon, economist at The Conference Board. “These data suggest that the slow pace in the labor market will continue in the months ahead and is likely to extend into the early months of 2008.”

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence survey data, released a day before the HWOL data, was another indication of the weakness in the labor market and the U.S. economy in general, Levanon said.

Overview: The National/Regional Picture

• In October, 2,875,300 of the 4,161,700 unduplicated online advertised vacancies were new ads that did not appear in September, while the remainder are reposted ads from the previous month.
• The 2.5 percent month-to-month decrease in total ads was caused primarily by a 2 percent decrease in new ads.
• Despite those declines, total ads and new ads rose 8.6 percent and 13.8 percent, respectively, from Oct. ‘06 to Oct. ‘07.
• The national decline in advertised vacancies between September and October reflected a lower volume of ads in eight of the nine Census regions (ad volume was virtually unchanged in the Middle Atlantic region):
• Oct. ‘06 to Oct. ‘07, seven of the nine regions continued to show a gain in labor demand:
  • The Mountain region once again had the highest ad rate (3.74), as four of the region’s states (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Montana) are among the top 10 states with the highest ads rate.
  • The central regions of the country experienced the largest over-the-year gains, with the West South Central region leading (up 29 percent), followed by the East North Central region (up 19 percent).
• Despite the over-the-year gains, the growth rate in most regions slowed down in recent months:
  • The New England region, despite having the second-highest ads rates (3.64 ads per 100 persons in the regional labor force), declined 6 percent in the last 12 months.
  • The Pacific region, which had an ads rate of 3.45, dipped 2.4 percent from last year’s level.

See MarketingCharts for detailed coverage by state, occupation, and metropolitan areas, including the following tables:

1. Top 10 states by highest ad rates
2. Top 10 states by most ads
3. Top 10 states by lowest supply/demand rates
4. Top 10 demand occupations and pay levels
5. Top metropolitan areas by highest ad rates, most ads, lowest supply/demand rates

About the data: The Help Wanted Online Data Series is a developmental program with research and evaluation studies ongoing. 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 underlying data for this series is provided by Wanted Technologies Corporation. CareerBuilder.com provides financial support for the series.