New York, NY, February 14, 2006--Online job ads rebounded sharply in January to 2,162,000 new unduplicated online job ads posted for the calendar month, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series.
The January total was up 529,000, an increase of one-third from the December low. January’s total was slightly higher than the August 2005 monthly peak of 2,131,000. April 2005 is the earliest monthly data available in this data series.
In January, there were 1.44 online job ads per 100 persons in the U.S. labor force, compared to 1.09 in December and 1.21 in November.
Although the data series does not have sufficient history to allow for seasonal adjustments, Ken Goldstein, Labor Economist at The Conference Board, noted that a large portion of the declines in November and December followed by the bounce back in January reflect seasonal patterns seen in other employment data. The monthly figures reported in the Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series are the sum of the number of unduplicated new first-time online job ads for each day of the calendar month.
“The fact that the January number is back up to the higher level we saw in August 2005 indicates that the demand for labor is holding steady and seems to have weathered the hurricane and energy-related effects of last Fall,” says Goldstein. “The January online help-wanted ad volume is consistent with what we are seeing from the Consumer Confidence Survey. In January, consumers were more upbeat about current economic conditions, and they were especially more positive about the job market.”
January ad volume rose from the previous month in each of the nine census regions. The strongest month-over-month increases in ad volume were in the New England (40%) and West South Central (37%) regions. Other regions were in line with the one-third rise for the nation as a whole, with the East South Central and Mid Atlantic regions rising 34%, East North Central and the South Atlantic up 32%, and the Pacific and Mountain regions up 31% and 30%, respectively.
January’s ad volume was up over December levels in all of the 52 metropolitan areas for which data are reported separately. Denver with 3.44 job ads per 100 persons in the labor force had the highest volume of ads adjusted for the size of the local labor force. Other areas with the largest number of ads per 100 persons in the labor force include the west coast areas of San Francisco (3.21), San Diego (3.12) and Seattle (3.03). On the east coast, Boston with 2.97 ads per 100 in the labor force and Washington D.C. with 2.93 have the highest volume. Only two metropolitan areas out of the 52 areas had less than one ad per 100 persons in the labor force – Detroit (0.72) and Rochester, NY (0.89).
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 long running Help-Wanted Advertising Index of print ads (which has been 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.
