New York, August 17--The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series reveals today that the number of new online job ads fell slightly to 1,970,000 in July from just over 2 million in May and June. The latest figure is still almost 10 percent higher than the 1,799,000 new online jobs posted in April.
Online ad volume in the Rocky Mountain, Pacific and South Atlantic regions continues to show steady growth, discounting the impact of the July 4th holiday.
Declares Ken Goldstein, labor economist at The Conference Board: "While the new online job series is in its infancy, latest readings are consistent with other labor market data, which shows the U.S. labor market is holding steady. The Conference Board’s Help-Wanted Advertising Index (which covers classified print job advertising in major newspapers throughout America), and job opening and labor turnover data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics all suggest a generally stable job market."
The July dip in new online ad postings largely reflects the July 4th holiday week, when ad volume is lower than during the last three weeks of July. "While weekly data often bounce around a bit, ad volume in the last three weeks of July was in-line with the numbers we saw in May and June," Goldstein notes.
The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series measures the number of new, first-time online job ads posted on more than 1,200 major Internet job boards and smaller job boards that serve niche markets and smaller geographic areas.
The July numbers translate into 1.33 new online job ads for every 100 persons in the civilian labor force (people who are employed and those actively seeing work). The New England region, at 1.88 ads per 100 workers, continues to lead the way in the number of ads per 100 participants in the labor force. Following closely are the Pacific Coast (1.86) and Rocky Mountain (1.84) regions.
Like The Conference Board’s long running Help-Wanted Advertising Index of print ads (which has been published since 1951), 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.
Over the years, analysts have applied various data-smoothing techniques to the Help-Wanted Advertising Index of print ads and determined that it continues to be a useful measure of the state of labor demand in the United States (see Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Economic Letter, #2005-02, January 21, 2005).
