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Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series

The Latest Press Release

THESE DATA ARE FOR ANALYSIS PURPOSES ONLY. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION, PUBLISHING, DATABASING, OR PUBLIC POSTING WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION.

Online Job Demand Drops in September, The Conference Board Reports

October 1, 2008

Download a PDF of the press release (which includes a breakdown of the number of new online help wanted ads)and the technical notes .

Download the National Historical Table.

Online Job Demand Drops 216,000 in September, Reports The Conference Board

Online advertised vacancies fell by a seasonally adjusted 216,000 in September to 4,418,000 with widespread losses across the regions and the States, according to The Conference Board's Help-Wanted Online Data Series (HWOL)™ released today. The September losses continued a downward trend which started in May 2007, the effects of which can be seen in the unemployment and employment trends in the charts below.

"All in all, indications are that employment will deteriorate even more rapidly in the near term," noted Gad Levanon, Senior Economist at The Conference Board. "The current HWOL data indicates that labor demand was down in September even before the tumultuous events in the financial sector during the end of the month."

There is a close correlation between employers' labor demand and unemployment. "As demand drops, unemployment will rise as it becomes more difficult for the unemployed to find jobs," Levanon noted. Since May 2007, the gap between the unemployed and advertised jobs (Chart 1) has significantly widened and now stands at almost 5 million or over 2 unemployed workers for each advertised opening.

The direct effect of lower employer demand can also be seen in the payroll employment trends (Chart 2) which turned lower in November 2007. Historically, labor demand has provided a leading indication of future employment trends.

REGIONAL/STATE HIGHLIGHTS

Declines in labor demand across the four broad Census regions (Table A, see pdf) were about proportionately spread with greatest losses in absolute numbers occurring in the larger states, Texas (-30,300), California (-21,300), New York (-15,800) and Pennsylvania (-14,100). "However, all states do not exhibit the same longer term trend," said Levanon. "Table A includes an indication of the trend for the larger states in each region. This provides a more complete picture of labor demand in these geographic areas than one can determine from looking at just the most recent month's data."

In the Northeast region, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey all had losses in September but overall continued on a flat trend. "Looking at the movements over the last few months, job demand in these states is basically flat," Levanon noted. Pennsylvania experienced a more recent downward trend. Unlike the other States in the Northeast, Pennsylvania showed a positive upward trend until early 2008, but since then has begun to show losses.

In the South, Florida (-5,000) and Georgia (-3,800) continue on a downward trend while job demand in Maryland continues to be basically positive and unaffected by the slowdown. Texas experienced a loss in September but still the overall trend remains flat. North Carolina and Virginia are also flat in terms of labor demand.

In the Midwest region, Wisconsin, after a long positive growth trend, has recently turned negative. Both Michigan and Missouri continued with long term growth trends while Illinois, Minnesota and Ohio were down slightly in September but still basically flat.

In the West region, both Arizona and California continued their long term declines that began in mid-2007.

The overall drop in employer labor demand has lead to higher unemployment and a widening gap between the number of unemployed and advertised jobs in most States. Looking at the Supply/Demand rates for the larger States in the regions, Maryland has the lowest rate at 1.06 indicating that the number of unemployed basically equals the number of ads. Massachusetts, Virginia and Colorado also have relatively low rates with only small gaps between labor supply and labor demand.

On the high end, Michigan has the highest S/D rate at 4.75, indicating that there are about 5 unemployed individuals for every available ad and correspondingly, the gap between supply and demand is quite large. Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina also have high rates with approximately 3 unemployed individuals for each available online job posting. It should be noted that the S/D rates only provide a measure of relative tightness of the individual State labor markets and do not suggest that the occupations of the unemployed directly align with the occupations of the advertised vacancies (see Occupational Highlights section).

OCCUPATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

The widening gap between advertised vacancies and people looking for work highlights the very different challenges in various occupations. Even with the slowdown in online advertised vacancies, there is still strong job demand for many of the higher paying occupations which make up 60% of the overall online demand. While these occupations make up the larger portion of online demand, they only account for 20% of the unemployed.

The medium/lower paying occupations make up the remaining 40% of online demand but represent 80% of the unemployed — this means that there are far fewer available online ads for most of the unemployed.

The overall national S/D rate is 2.02 indicating, on average, 2 unemployed workers for each advertised vacancy; however, looking at the S/D rates for the more detailed occupations, a different picture emerges in terms of the ability to place the unemployed into the advertised jobs.

Table B (see pdf) shows that the high-demand, high-paying occupations have low S/D rates. For Computer and Math occupations (S/D=0.13) there are over 7 advertised vacancies for every unemployed individual and for Healthcare Practitioners/Technical (S/D=0.23) there are over 4 ads for every unemployed individual. On the other hand, the S/D rates for the medium/lower paying occupations generally have high S/D rates. In the Production category (S/D= 5.80) and Food Preparation (S/D= 6.45) there are 6 unemployed individuals for every ad; correspondingly, in the Transportation category (S/D= 4.84) there are about 5 unemployed workers for every advertised vacancy.

"In the U.S. job market, there are challenges both to supply an adequate number of trained individuals to fill the higher paying jobs and also to create sufficient employer demand or skills training programs for unemployed individuals in the medium/lower paying occupations," Levanon noted.

METRO AREA HIGHLIGHTS

In September, 35 of the 52 metropolitan areas for which data is reported separately posted a decline in the number of online advertised vacancies from last September. The New York metro area continued to post the largest number of advertised vacancies (273,000).

Among the top 10 metro areas with the largest number of online advertised vacancies, only Washington, DC (165,200 online ads) also made the top 10 list for highest number of ads per 100 persons in the local labor force (an ads rate of 5.41) and the top 10 list for most favorable S/D rate. Advertised vacancies exceeded the number of unemployed persons looking for work in Washington, DC, as well as Salt Lake City, Austin, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Seattle-Tacoma and Boston.

PROGRAM NOTES

The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series™ measures the number of new, first-time online jobs and jobs reposted from the previous month 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 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.

With the October 1, 2008 release, HWOL provides seasonally adjusted data for the U.S., the 9 Census regions and 50 States. This data series, for which the earliest data is May 2005, continues to publish not seasonally adjusted data for 52 large metropolitan areas and occupations. It is The Conference Board's intent to provide seasonally adjusted data for both large metro areas and occupations in the future.

Persons using this data are urged to review the information on the database and methodology available on The Conference Board website and contact the economists listed at the top of this release with questions and comments. Background information and technical notes on this new series are available here at: http://www.conference-board.org/economics/helpwantedOnline.cfm.

The underlying data for this series is provided by Wanted Technologies Corporation. Additional information on the Bureau of Labor Statistics data used in this release can be found on the BLS website, www.bls.gov.

THE CONFERENCE BOARD

More information about The Conference Board.

WANTED Technologies Corporation

WANTED is a leading supplier of real-time sales and business intelligence solutions for the media classified and recruitment industries. Using its proprietary On-Demand data mining, lead generation and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) integrated technologies, WANTED aggregates real-time data from thousands of online job boards, real estate and newspaper sites, as well as corporate Web sites on a daily basis. WANTED's data is used to optimize sales and to implement marketing strategies within the classified ad departments of major media organizations, as well as by staffing firms, advertising agencies and human resources specialists. For more information, please visit: www.wantedtech.com.

For further information contact:
Frank Tortorici
(1) 212 339 0231
f.tortorici@conference-board.org

Gad Levanon
1 212 339 0317
gad.levanon@conference-board.org

June Shelp
1 212 339 0369
june.shelp@conference-board.org

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