New York, May 16, 2006--New online job ads dipped in April to 2,262,700, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series. The April level was 138,400, or 6 percent, below the previous month and followed a sharp rise in March.
Despite the decline, the number of new ads for online jobs in April was the second highest since The Conference Board launched the Help-Wanted OnLine series in April 2005 and well above last year's level.
In April, there were 1.51 online job ads per 100 persons in the U.S. labor force, compared with 1.60 in March and 1.33 in February.
The Conference Board now has 13 months of data for the Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series. From April 2005 to April 2006, new online job ads increased 26 percent, an increase that is consistent with the rise seen in other labor market indicators during the same period.
"This rate of change is in line with growth rates of other vacancy measures during periods of economic expansion," said Gad Levanon, economist at The Conference Board. "It is typical for measures related to job openings to show much greater movement, both up and down, than you typically see in the overall employment data. The monthly net change in employment is reflective of the underlying dynamic of the job market which includes people leaving jobs as well as new hires. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics' JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) series, which measures job vacancies at the national level, 2006 monthly figures are running on average about 10-20 percent above the 2005 levels."
The monthly figures reported in the Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series include all unduplicated new online job ads for each day of the calendar month. The series is new, with data available monthly beginning in April 2005. It does not yet have a sufficient history to allow for seasonal adjustments.
Declines in new online job ads were evident in all nine census regions in April compared to the March level. The largest declines for the month were in the Middle Atlantic region (New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania) and the South Atlantic region (Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia), down 10 percent and 8 percent respectively. The smallest declines were in the Mountain region (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming), the West South Central region (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas) and the West North Central region (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota), down 3, 4 and 4 percent respectively. New England remains the region with the highest number of new online jobs per 100 persons (2.30), and the East South Central with the lowest (0.95).
But the figures for April 2006, compared with April 2005, show that the number of new job ads was up in all nine census regions, with the largest gains concentrated in the west and southwestern parts of the country. The largest increase was in the West South Central region, up 53 percent, where the volume of ads rose significantly after last season's hurricanes, reflecting the rebuilding efforts and population movements in the area. Other areas with substantial year-over-year gains in online job ads were the Mountain and Pacific regions (43 percent and 31 percent, respectively). In contrast, online job ads in the East South Central region (Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee) rose only 2.7 percent between April 2005 and April 2006, a rate that is substantially lower than the national average of 26 percent over the same period. "The East South Central is also the region with the lowest number of new online jobs per 100 persons," said Levanon. "So the slow increase in the number of new ads in the region might well reflect the low usage of online job advertising rather than an especially weak economy."
