Online help-wanted ads increased 3 percent in June

New unduplicated online job ads increased in June to 2,436,300, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series. The June level was 81,800, or 3 percent above the previous month and followed an increase of 4 percent in May.

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 2,401,200. 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. Over the year June 2005 to June 2006, new online job ads increased 19.0 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."

The monthly figures reported in the Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series are the sum of the number of unduplicated new online job ads for each day of the calendar month. The series is a new series with data available monthly beginning in April 2005 and does not have sufficient history to allow for seasonal adjustments.

A Cross-Country Pickup

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 (2.50), and the East South Central with the lowest (1.01).

Over the period June 2006 to June 2005, 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 (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," said Levanon.

OnLine Job Ads Rise to a New High in San Diego

In June, San Diego posted a new high of over 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.

ABOUT THE NEW ONLINE JOB 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.