"Employers are actively looking for the right workers and a relatively tight labor market is forcing them to maintain aggressive advertising plans," said Gad Levanon, Economist at The Conference Board. "Business sentiment edged up in the first quarter and these indications about hiring plans early in the second quarter suggest business sentiment is continuing to pick up. The April rise in advertised vacancies reflects some momentum in the labor market, which in turn reflects an economy that is slow but not slowing."
THE NATIONAL PICTURE
The 4,365,000 unduplicated online advertised vacancies in April include 2,898,000 new ads that did not appear in March, as well as reposted ads from the previous months. During April, total ads and new ads increased 16 percent from the previous month. Over the year (April'06 — April'07) total ads and new ads rose 24 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
The monthly rise reflects in part the longer April reference period when there are three more days than in the March reference period. The April 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-March to mid-April. This new series, which includes data from April 2005, does not have sufficient history to allow for seasonally adjusted monthly data.
The fastest year-over-year growth was in the mid-section of the country with the West South Central and West North Central regions up 41 percent and 35 percent, respectively. The slowest growth was in New England, up 6 percent.
STATE HIGHLIGHTS
* Massachusetts posts the highest ads rate for the fifth consecutive month.
* Virginia and Utah tied for first as the states with the lowest supply/demand rate this month.
Online advertised vacancies in California, the state with the largest labor force in the nation, totaled 722,600 in April. The volume of online advertised vacancies in California was significantly above the next highest states, Texas (351,000), New York (316,400), Florida (288,100) and Illinois (202,500).
Massachusetts posted 5.1 vacancies for every 100 persons in the state labor force, the highest rate in the nation. Alaska (4.97) and Nevada (4.94) 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 Utah (0.84), Virginia (0.84) and Delaware (0.88). States where the number of unemployed persons looking for work significantly exceeded the number of online advertised demand included Mississippi (5.2), Michigan (5), and Kentucky (3.8).
OCCUPATIONAL FOCUS
* 476,200 ads posted for Management occupations this month.
* Management and Business/Financial occupations account for more than 1/3 of online ads in some regions.
* Engineering occupations are in high demand in San Jose
In April, the occupations with the most advertised online vacancies nationally were Management (476,200) and Healthcare practitioner and technical (374,700). "These are also, on average, among the highest paying occupations," said Levanon.
Engineering Occupations
In April there were 176,700 online advertised vacancies for engineering jobs.
"The share of engineering ads varied significantly across metro areas. While in Miami only 3 percent of the ads were for engineers, in San Jose the share was over 13 percent, by far the highest in the country," noted Levanon. In terms of the sheer volume of engineering job ads, California (33,100), Texas (14,600), and New York (13,800) were the top states. Metro areas with the largest number of online ads for engineers included New York (14,300), Los Angeles (9,800), and Washington, D.C. (9,400).
SAN JOSE STILL IN THE LEAD
San Jose ranks first with 7.18 ads per 100 persons in the labor force.
Salt Lake City has the lowest supply/demand ratio in the nation.
In April, the number of unemployed persons looking for work was less than the number of advertised vacancies in 13 of the 52 metro areas for which data is reported separately. The top ranking areas were Salt Lake City, Washington D.C., San Francisco, San Jose, and Austin, and San Diego, New Orleans and Las Vegas were just below the top ten areas.
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 April, with 321,000 and 262,500, respectively. The top two metro areas in terms of advertised vacancies per 100 persons in the local labor force were San Jose (7.18) and San Francisco (6.80), followed by Austin (6.13), and Washington D.C. (5.95).
