New York, NY, October 31, 2006--Total online job ads increased by 198,300 or 5 percent to 3,831,100 in October, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series released today.
The monthly increase reflects growth in advertised job vacancies in 44 of the 50 states and was widespread across most major metropolitan areas. Over the year, online advertised vacancies increased 26% for the nation as a whole.
"The number of online job ads increased in October, compared with a decline in September - October last year," said Gad Levanon, economist at The Conference Board. "In addition, the year over year growth rate climbed 26 percent, up from 10-15 percent during the last few months. The demand for jobs is more positive now than it has been in recent months."
The Conference Board is introducing its newly redesigned Help Wanted Online Data Series (HWOL) with the release of the October 2006 data. The HWOL program is now one of the earliest released economic indicators for the previous month. Geographic coverage has been expanded and now provides detailed monthly data on labor demand (vacancies) for the U.S., the 9 Census regions, the 50 States, and 52 of the largest metro areas. Information for Total Ads has been introduced along with the already existing New Ads data. Economic analysis in the release has been broadened to include both labor supply (unemployment) and labor demand (vacancies); in addition, the program has been expanded to include geographic occupational detail on labor demand along with occupational pay levels.
The underlying data for The Conference Board HWOL are provided by Wanted Technologies, Inc. Financial support for this series is provided by CareerBuilder.com.
Total unduplicated online advertised job vacancies in October include 2,525,700 new ads that did not appear in September, as well as reposted ads from the previous month. During October, both total ads rose 5 percent and new ads rose 6 percent. Over the year (October'05 - October'06) total ads and new ads rose 26 percent and 28 percent, respectively.
The monthly increase of 198,300 in total ads reflects increased postings in 44 states. This more than offsets modest dips in 5 states. In one state (Connecticut) the number of advertised vacancies remained virtually unchanged. Monthly gains were greatest in the West South Central, South Atlantic and Mountain regions, and included increases in some of the largest states, such as California (+35,200), Texas (+24,300), Florida (+20,500), New York (+17,100), and Illinois (+11,500). Major metropolitan areas contributing to these gains were New York City (+17,700), Los Angeles (+8,700), and Chicago (+7,600). Washington, D.C. posted an increase of 12,700 ads over the month.
Modest declines in advertised vacancies over the month were reported in Massachusetts (-2,600), which includes Boston (-1,700); Alabama (-1,700), with Birmingham (-600) and South Dakota (-1,200).
Over the year, the states with the largest gains in advertised vacancies were Oklahoma (+68%), Maine (+67%), Texas (+58%) and Minnesota (+53%). Metropolitan areas with the fastest October-October growth were in areas hard hit by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes and included New Orleans (+242%), Oklahoma City (+115%), Houston (+89%), and Austin (+77%). The metro areas with the slowest growth include Honolulu (4%), Birmingham (11%), Tampa (16%), and Nashville (16%).
California leads the next largest state by over 2 to 1 in total advertised vacancies Massachusetts has more than 5 advertised vacancies for every 100 persons in the labor force, the highest rate in the nation Wyoming, Utah, Nevada are among the states where advertised job vacancies outnumber the number of unemployed workers.
