Online advertised vacancies fell 77,800 in October to 4,735,600, reveals a new report. The October number is in line with the number of advertised vacancies in May 2012.
According to "The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine Data Series", the supply/demand rate stands at 2.5 unemployed for every vacancy. In September the number of unemployed was 7.3 million above the number of advertised vacancies, down from 11.8 million at the end of the recession in June 2009.
"The average labor demand for the last five months (since May 2012) is neither up nor down but basically flat," said June Shelp, Vice President at The Conference Board.
Nationally the gains and losses over the last five months netted out to a very weak average of about 4,000/month. There have been some bright spots recently with construction occupations - up 16 percent since May - while labor demand since May has been flat in occupations as varied as management, health care practitioners, and office workers and other occupations (healthcare support and sales workers) have shown declines. The flat national increase belies strength in some states including Idaho and Michigan, which both increased 10 percent, andFlorida, with a 9 percent increase in labor demand for the five-month period.
In October, online labor demand declined in 39 of the 50 States in the U.S. However, all states but Vermont (which is down) and Rhode Island (no change) were above last October's levels. Many States posted gains in the last five months, May to October 2012, though the national average was flat. Large States in the south with the largest gains in labor demand in the last five months included Florida and North Carolina (up 8.7 and 8.8 percent, respectively), and Texas and Georgia, up 4.7 and 4.6 percent. In the West, Arizona was up 15.8 percent in the last five months while California and Colorado rose 5.7 and 6.2 percent. Slow or declining labor demand in other large States over this period included Pennsylvania (down 1.8 percent) and Ohio (down 3.5 percent), while New York in the East and Illinois in the Midwest were basically flat.
The number of advertised vacancies exceeded the number of unemployed only in North Dakota, where the Supply/Demand rate was 0.63. The State with the highest Supply/Demand rate is Mississippi (5.31), where there were over five unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy. Note 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.
In October, 12 of the largest metro areas posted decreases in labor demand and about 1/3 of the largest metro areas have supply/demand rates below 2, indicating that there are fewer than two unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy.
