Online Advertised Job Vacancies Up Over the Year, The Conference Board Reports Today

NEW YORK, April 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Total online job ads were 3,754,400 in March, a dip of 69,800 or 2 percent from February, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted On Line Data Series(TM) released today, reflecting the shorter reference period of mid-February to mid-March, when there were three fewer days than in the previous month. 

There were 2.5 advertised vacancies online for every 100 persons in the labor force in March. Over the year March'06 - March '07, online advertised vacancies increased 18 percent for the nation as a whole. "All in all, the labor market is holding remarkably steady," said Gad Levanon, Economist at The Conference Board. "The March dip in advertised vacancies is entirely due to fewer days in the February-March reference period." 

Growth in the number of online job ads over the year continues to be in the double digits. "I would expect that the federal employment numbers scheduled for release later this week will show the same reasonable, but not spectacular, gains we've seen over the last few months," Levanon indicated. 

The Conference Board introduced its newly redesigned Help Wanted Online Data Series(TM) (HWOL) with the release of the October 2006 data. The HWOL program is now one of the earliest released economic indicators for the previous month. Geographic coverage has been expanded and now provides detailed monthly data on labor demand (vacancies) for the U.S., the 9 Census regions, the 50 States, and 52 of the largest metro areas. 

Information for Total Ads has been introduced along with the already existing New Ads data.Economic analysis in the release has been broadened to include both labor supply (unemployment) and labor demand (vacancies); in addition, the program has been expanded to include geographic occupational detail on labor demand along with occupational pay levels. 

Detailed information on this series is available in the technical notes to this series on The Conference Board website www.conference-board.org/economics/helpwantedOnline.cfm. The upcoming schedule of monthly releases is listed in this release as well as the technical notes on the web site. 

The underlying data for The Conference Board HWOL are provided by Wanted Technologies Corporation. Financial support for this series is provided by CareerBuilder.com.