State Ranks Fourth Nationally In Internet Ad Vacancies

NEW YORK CITY — Connecticut online job ads have been very stable over the last two months fluctuating less than 0.01 percent in both October and November. Online advertised vacancies fell in November in most states, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series released this week.

The 71,100 online advertised vacancies advertised in Connecticut in November reflected 3.9 ads for every 100 persons in the state labor force and were 1.9 percent of the 3,711,000 online ads nationwide. Over the year November ’05–November ’06 online ads rose 11 percent in Connecticut compared to 15 percent in the nation as a whole.

“Connecticut is fourth in the rankings of the number of ads adjusted for the size of the labor force,” said Gad Levanon, economist at The Conference Board. “Looking at the ads rates [the number of ads per 100 persons in the local labor force] is a good way to see how various areas in Connecticut compare.

“The Bridgeport metro area has the largest number of ads adjusted for the size of the local labor market, 5.3 ads per 100 persons in the labor force, as compared to Hartford and New Haven, each at 4.3. The Norwich metro area at 2.7 ads per 100 labor force was slightly lower,” he noted.

Using the latest available federal unemployment statistics to compare the number of unemployed (labor supply) to the number of advertised vacancies (labor demand), Connecticut compares very favorably to the nation as a whole. While nationally there were more unemployed workers than online advertised vacancies, in Connecticut the reverse was true and there were more advertised vacancies than job seekers.

“Although one can not conclude that the advertised vacancies are a direct match to the skills and occupations of the unemployed, comparing the number of unemployed to the number of ads does indicate that the job seekers in Connecticut are seeing a larger volume of job ads than those looking for work in some other parts of the country,” Mr Levanon said.

National Highlights

Nationally the 3,711,000 million job vacancies advertised online in November include 2,396,000 new ads that did not appear in October, as well as reposted ads from the previous month. During November, total ads declined by 119, 800 or 3 percent and new ads declined 5 percent.

Over the November ’05– November ’06 year, total ads and new ads rose 15 percent and 16 percent, respectively. The dip in advertised vacancies was widespread with only the Middle Atlantic region posting a modest gain.

In November, the occupations with the most vacancies advertised online include management (410,000), business & financial operations (305,000) and office and administrative support (297,000).

The full national release with geographic detail for the nation, the nine Census regions, 50 states, and 52 large metropolitan areas as well as occupational detail is available on The Conference Board website at www.conference-board.org/economics/helpwantedOnline.cfm.

The monthly 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-October to mid-November. This new series includes data from April 2005 and does not have sufficient history to allow for seasonal adjusted monthly data.

Online Data Series

The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series measures the number of new, first-time online jobs posted 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 has been published since 1951), 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.

The Conference Board, as a standard practice with new data series, considers the estimates in The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series to be developmental. As a not-for-profit business research organization, The Conference Board is publishing the early years of this series for use by the media, analysts, researchers, and the business community. Persons using this data are urged to review the information on the database and methodology available on the firm’s website, www.conference-board.org/economics/helpwantedOnline.cfm. The underlying data for this series is provided by Wanted Technologies, Inc. CareerBuilder.com provides financial support for the series.

Additional information on the Bureau of Labor Statistics data used in the national release can be found on the BLS website, www.bls.gov.

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