New, unduplicated online job ads grew 3 percent in June from the previous month, with the largest supply per capita located along the nation’s East and West coasts, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series, released today.
Some 81,800 new online job ads were posted last month to more than 1,200 Internet job boards nationwide, bringing the total number of postings to approximately 2.44 million.
The number of new ads for online jobs in June marks a new peak for the series, surpassing the previous high in March 2006 of 2.4 million. In June, there were 1.63 online job ads per 100 persons in the U.S. labor force, compared with 1.57 in May 2006, 1.51 in April and 1.6 in March. Between June 2005 and June 2006, new online job ads increased 19 percent.
“While the number of online job ads rose in June, the monthly growth rate has slowed over the last several months,” said Gad Levanon, economist at The Conference Board. “The slowdown in month-over-month growth is consistent with the weakening we’re seeing in measures of vacancies in other government data, where the growth rate has been essentially flat since the beginning of 2006. The employment numbers from the establishment survey and other labor market indicators, including employment related findings from The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index, are also providing signals of a weakening job market in recent months.”
New online job ads per 100 persons in the labor force increased in all nine Census regions in June compared to the May level. The largest increases for the month were in the West North Central and the Pacific regions, up 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively. The smallest increases were in the Middle Atlantic region (New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey) and the Mountain region (Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico), up 1 percent and 2 percent, respectively. New England remains the region with the highest number of new online jobs per 100 persons (2.5), and the East South Central with the lowest (1.01).
Between June 2005 and June 2006, the number of new job ads was up in all Census regions as well. The largest increase was in the West South Central region, up 42 percent over the year. This region includes Texas and Oklahoma, as well as Louisiana where the job picture is impacted by last year’s severe hurricanes and increased rebuilding activity. Other areas with substantial year-over-year gains in online job ads were the West North Central and Pacific regions (up 28 percent and 27 percent, respectively).
In contrast, online job ads in the East South Central region (Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee) only increased slightly by 1.7 percent between June 2005 and June 2006. Other areas reporting an increase slower than the national average are the Middle Atlantic region (New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania), up 12.7 percent, and the East North Central region (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin), up 12.3 percent. “This OnLine Series is still very new and in a developmental stage, making the regional year-over- year changes something that should be interpreted with caution,” Levanon said.
In June, San Diego posted a new high of more than 4 job ads for every 100 persons in the local labor force. San Diego has led the nation for the last three months, and is the first of the 52 metropolitan areas for which data are reported separately to hit the 4-job-ads-per-100-labor-force mark.
Other metropolitan areas with a large number of ads per 100 persons in the labor force were concentrated on the East and West coasts and include: San Francisco (3.69); Seattle-Tacoma (3.66); Boston (3.56); and San Jose (3.39). In June, and in all the previous months in 2006, the Detroit metropolitan area, with less than one online job ad per 100 persons in the labor force (0.87), had the lowest number of ads adjusted for the labor force.
