New York, NY, June 29, 2006--The Conference Board Help-Wanted Advertising Index, a key measure of job offerings in major newspapers across America, dipped two points in May.
The Index now stands at 33. It was 38 one year ago.
The Conference Board, the global business research and membership organization, examines each month help-wanted ads in 51 major newspapers and online.
In the last three months, help-wanted advertising declined in all nine U.S. regions. Steepest declines occurred in the West South Central (-19.5%), West North Central (-17.9%) and Pacific (-17.3%) regions.
Says Ken Goldstein, labor economist at The Conference Board: "Businesses remain cautious about hiring when near-term economic prospects appear soft. They remain fundamentally worried about the expense of new hiring (in terms of wages, as well as health and pension benefits) relative to pricing power. With some evidence that retail inflation may be picking up, that concern may be alleviated. But consumers worry about price hikes outstripping their wage gains, and may limit their spending increases. Since the consumer represents two-thirds of the economy, that would fit in with the signal from The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index. This is certainly a more negative picture going into the second half of the year, compared to the beginning of the year."
New online job ads increased in May to 2,354,500, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series. The May level was 91,800, or 4 percent above the previous month and followed a sharp decline in April.
Despite the increase, the number of new ads for online jobs in May was lower than in March, which was the month with the highest count since The Conference Board launched the Help-Wanted OnLine Data series in April 2005. In May, there were 1.57 online job ads per 100 persons in the U.S. labor force, compared with 1.51 in April 2006 and 1.60 in March.
