"Online job demand has been virtually unchanged over the last few months but continues to show a better than 20% gain over last year," said Gad Levanon, Economist at The Conference Board. "Tight labor markets in many areas of the country and in specific occupations and industries like IT and healthcare are forcing companies to advertise more aggressively than last year in order to find the employees they need. We do not expect economic growth to accelerate until the end of the year, but finding the right employee is already a challenge in many areas of the country."
THE NATIONAL PICTURE
The 4,280,400 unduplicated online advertised vacancies in June include 2,744,900 new ads that did not appear in May, as well as reposted ads from the previous months. During June, both total and new ads declined by 2 percent from the previous month. Over the year (June'06 — June'07) total ads and new ads rose 24 percent and 19 percent, respectively. The June figures reported in the Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series™ reflect the sum of the number of unduplicated online job ads for each day from mid-May to mid-June. This new series, which includes data from April 2005, does not have sufficient history to allow for seasonally adjusted monthly data.
In June the largest monthly decline was in New England (down 7 %). Only two regions posted over the month increases, Pacific (1.4%) and West North Central (0.4%). Except for the New England region which dipped 2%, over the year June'06-June'07 the other 8 Census regions posted double-digit gains with the largest increases in the Mountain (35%) West North Central (40%) and West South Central (44%) regions.
STATE HIGHLIGHTS
Nevada posts the highest ads rate for the first time.
Montana leads the nation with the lowest supply/demand rate this month.
Online advertised vacancies in California, the state with the largest labor force in the nation, totaled 711,900 in June. The volume of online advertised vacancies in California was significantly above the next highest states, Texas (363,700), New York (302,600), Florida (262,100) and Illinois (197,000).
Nevada posted 4.91 vacancies for every 100 persons in the state labor force, the highest rate in the nation moving up from third place and sixth place in the last two months. Alaska (4.75) and Colorado (4.56) were close behind in the number of advertised vacancies when adjusted for the size of the state labor force.
"Looking at the number of unemployed in relation to the number of advertised vacancies provides an indication of available job opportunities for the unemployed," said Levanon. Using the latest unemployment data available from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and computing the supply/demand ratio (unemployed/advertised vacancies), the top states with the lowest supply/demand rates included Montana (0.42), Idaho (0.57), and Delaware (0.61). There were 16 states, or about one-third of the nation, where the number of unemployed workers was less than the number of online job ads.
States where the number of unemployed persons looking for work significantly exceeded the number of online advertised demand included Mississippi (4.1) and Michigan (3.9).
OCCUPATIONAL FOCUS
Over 396,600 ads posted for management occupations in June.
Management and Business/Financial occupations account for more than 1/3 of online ads in some regions.
In June, occupations with substantial advertised online vacancies nationally were management positions (396,600) and healthcare practitioner and technical workers (387,300). "These are also, on average, among the highest paying occupations," said Levanon. According to the latest federal hourly wage data, wages average above $44 an hour for management positions.
Also in high demand are business and financial occupations (323,400); office and administrative support (323,200) and computer and mathematical (313,100) occupations.
SAN JOSE STILL IN THE LEAD
San Jose ranks first with 7.1 ads per 100 persons in the labor force.
Salt Lake City, Austin and Washington, D.C. have the lowest supply/demand ratio in the nation.
The number of unemployed persons looking for work was less than the number of advertised vacancies in 23 of the 52 metro areas for which data is reported separately. The top ranking areas were Salt Lake City, Austin, Washington D.C., Denver and Phoenix.
Two of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, New York and Los Angeles, were first and second in the absolute volume of advertised job vacancies in June, with 305,100 and 254,000, respectively. The top two metro areas in terms of advertised vacancies per 100 persons in the local labor force were San Jose (7.06) and San Francisco (6.86), followed by Austin (6.43), and Denver (5.38).
