The Conference Board Reports Online Job Demand Down 66,700 in June

Here's a shocker - Job Demand is Down.  BUT, it's not dropping as much as month's past.  Some Key Insights:

• Drop in demand slight (71,000 vs. 1.2M)


• Job demand growing in Florida and Georgia


• Healthcare support demand still there


• Jobseeker to jobs ratio between 10:1 and 2:1 depending on state


• Where's demand up? 
  
  
  
  
  • Honolulu:  Up 2,900 over last year
  
  
  • Providence gains 1,200
  
  
  • Virginia Beach gains 200.
  
  
  
  

What are you waiting for?  Hawaii, the Beach, and the Water Fires!  Start looking!  - Dan

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From Conference Board - June 29, 2009

Nationally, labor demand shows modest growth of 35,000 since March.

States show a mixed picture in June: 24 posting gains and 26 posting declines.

Modest growth in job demand evident in Florida and Georgia over last few months.

Occupations: June advertised vacancies for healthcare support occupations are running at the same level as last year.

NEW YORK, June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Online advertised vacancies declined 66,700 to 3,294,800 in June, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series (HWOL)(TM)
released today. In the five months since January, online labor demand
has dropped a relatively modest 71,000, in sharp contrast to the
1,200,000 decline in the previous five months from August 2008 to January 2009.

"We are not out of the woods yet, but job demand has definitely stabilized since January," said
Gad Levanon,
Senior Economist at The Conference Board. "Although there is some
bounce in the monthly numbers, the number of online advertised
vacancies has held steady in the last three months (up a modest
35,000). Across the U.S., it is an increasingly mixed picture with some
states, like Florida and Georgia, showing some modest gains, others such as New York, North Carolina holding steady, and some, like California and Pennsylvania, yet to show real improvement."

Regional and State Highlights

Modest strength seen in the South in states like Florida and Georgia.

Among the 20 most populous states, unemployed people outnumber
advertised vacancies (Supply/Demand) and range from a low of roughly 2
to 1 (Maryland) to about 10 to 1 (Michigan).

The number of advertised vacancies declined in June in all four
regions of the country (Northeast, South, Midwest and West), ranging
from a modest drop of 3,400 in the Southern region to 18,100 in the
Northeast, 13,400 in the Midwest and 10,300 in the West. "The June data
shows an almost even split between the number of states with increases
(24) and the number with declines (26)," said Levanon. "But there are
clear signs that the employers are advertising again for workers and in
some states the trend over the last few months has improved."

The June decrease of 3,400 in the Southern region reflected the
contrasting movement of some of the largest states. Of these states, Florida experienced a sizeable gain, 9,200, and was followed by Georgia (2,900), North Carolina (900) and Virginia (100). Texas and Maryland both experienced declines, -5,100 and -1,400 respectively. Among the smaller states in the South, West Virginia (4,100), Kentucky (3,700) and Arkansas (1,600) increased in June. Oklahoma (-1,100) and Louisiana (-800) both declined in June and continued their relative flat trends since January.

In the Northeast, all four of the largest states posted declines in June. New York showing the largest decrease (5,300), however looking at the trend since January, job demand in New York is basically flat. New Jersey, which was down 2,600 in June, has experienced a modest increase of 1,700 over the last four months. Pennsylvania (-2,700) and Massachusetts
(-2,200) decreased modestly in June, and both states continue their
downward trend. Among the states with smaller populations in the
region, Maine dropped a modest 100 in June and overall has shown a flat trend since January.

In the West, changes in labor demand among the four most populous states in June were split between increases in Arizona and Colorado and decreases in California and Washington. Arizona and Colorado
increased 4,600 and 3,400 respectively and thereby returned to their
levels at the beginning of the year, although still 40 percent below
their levels in June 2008. California was down 15,900 in June and continued its downward trend. Washington reversed only a small number of last month's gains with a decline of 1,300 jobs. Among the states with smaller populations, Hawaii and New Mexico are two states in the West where the trend has been steady since January. In June, Hawaii rose 800 while New Mexico was up 1,000.

In the Midwest, Wisconsin declined by 4,300, Minnesota decreased by 2,300, and Missouri declined by 1,800. Illinois experienced the largest increase (1,900) and was followed by Michigan (800) and Ohio (700). Ohio continues to be the Midwest state where drops in labor demand have leveled off over the last couple of months.

The Supply/Demand rate for the U.S. in May (the latest month for
which unemployment numbers are available) was at 4.32, down slightly
from 4.40 in April but still indicating that there are more than 4
unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy. Among the
states, the highest Supply/Demand rate is in Michigan
(9.95), or nearly 10 unemployed people for every advertised vacancy.
Other states where there are over 6 unemployed for every advertised
vacancy include Indiana (7.73), Kentucky (7.33), Ohio (6.54), North Carolina (6.49), and Mississippi (6.30). North Dakota (1.41) and Nebraska (1.44) have some of the lowest rates.

It should be noted that the Supply/Demand rate only provides a
measure of relative tightness of the individual State labor markets and
does not suggest that the occupations of the unemployed directly align
with the occupations of the advertised vacancies.

OCCUPATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

Online advertised vacancies rise in June for the occupational
category Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports and are in line with year
ago levels.

Construction and Legal among the categories that are unchanged in June but well below year ago levels.

Labor Demand dips in June for Sales occupations and several white
collar occupational categories including Computer and Mathematical.

Almost half of the 66,700 monthly decline in June in online
advertised vacancies reflects decreases in Computer and Mathematical
Science (-19,900), Sales and Related (-11,700) occupations. Advertised
vacancies in both of these occupations are over 30 percent below levels
of a year ago. Other large occupation groups with declines in June were
Health Practitioners and Technical occupations (-10,400), and
Architecture and Engineering (-10,000).

While online advertised vacancies in most of these broad
occupational categories continue to run well below year ago levels,
there are a few exceptions. Art, design, entertainment, sports and
media posted 98,200 advertised vacancies in June, exactly in line with
the June 2008 level. Healthcare support occupations at 97,800 were slightly above (600) last year's level.

Supply/Demand rates indicated that, among the occupations with the
largest number of online advertised vacancies, there is a significant
difference in the number of unemployed seeking positions in these
occupations. Among the top ten occupations advertised online, there
were more vacancies than unemployed people seeking positions for
healthcare practitioners (0.4) and computer and mathematical science
(0.4). On the other hand, in sales and related occupations, there were
about four people seeking jobs in this field for every online
advertised vacancy (4.3) and there were nearly five unemployed looking
for work in office and administrative support positions for every
advertised opening (4.7). For management positions, there were almost
two people looking for every advertised opening (1.6).

METRO AREA HIGHLIGHTS

49 of top 52 Metro areas post over-the-year declines in job demand in June.

Honolulu labor demand up 2,900 over last year's levels, Providence gains 1,200, and Virginia Beach gains 200.

In June, only 3 of the 52 metropolitan areas for which data are
reported separately posted over-the-year increases in the number of
online advertised vacancies. Honolulu, with 13,700 ads, was well above last year's level (27.4 percent). Providence, with 19,700, gained 1,200 advertised vacancies compared to last year. Virginia Beach, with 21,300, gained 200. Among the three metro areas with the largest numbers of advertised vacancies, the New York and the Los Angeles metro areas were about 25 percent below June 2008 levels. Washington, D.C. was down 14,300, or 8.8 percent, from last year's level.

The number of unemployed exceeded the number of advertised vacancies
in all of the 52 metro areas for which information is reported
separately. Washington, D.C. and Salt Lake City
were the locations with the most favorable supply/demand rates, where
the number of unemployed looking for work was only slightly larger than
the number of advertised vacancies. On the other hand, metro areas in
which the respective number of unemployed is substantially above the
number of online advertised vacancies include Riverside, CA, where there are nearly 10 unemployed people for every advertised vacancy (9.7), Detroit (9.6), Portland (5.9), Sacramento (5.6), Chicago (5.4), Miami (5.3) and Los Angeles (5.0). Supply/Demand rate data are for April 2009, the latest month for which unemployment data for local areas are available.

Note: New Seasonal Factors for all Seasonally Adjusted Series

With the release of June 2009 data, new seasonal
adjustment factors have been applied to the national, regional, state
and occupation time series. In addition there was an adjustment to the May 2009 data as a result of a program improvement.

With the release of May 2009 data, the occupational
data are now seasonally adjusted. Unemployment data are from the Bureau
of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey and are seasonally
adjusted by The Conference Board in order to provide comparable data to
calculate Supply/Demand rates for occupations. The Supply/Demand rate
is the number of unemployed in the occupation divided by the number of
advertised vacancies in the occupation.

PROGRAM NOTES

The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series(TM)
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 was published for over 55 years and
discontinued in July 2008 and continues to be available
for research), 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 began
providing seasonally adjusted data for the U.S., the 9 Census regions
and 50 States. Seasonally adjusted data for occupations is provided
beginning with the June 1, 2009 release. This data series, for which the earliest data is May 2005,
continues to publish not seasonally adjusted data for the 52 large
metropolitan areas, but it is The Conference Board's intent to provide
seasonally adjusted data for large metro areas in the future.

People 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 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.