The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series (HWOL)(TM) said today that online job postings declined 70,200 to 4,369,200 in November.
That brings the total decline from September, October, and November to 264,000.
The data also showed that labor demand labor diminished in the Northeast, the South and the West, with Pennsylvania posting -19,900, the largest decline in labor demand in the Northeast.
In the South, Texas posted the largest decline, with -37,800. Minnesota had the largest drop in the Midwest with -12,600.
“Online advertised vacancies began slipping in mid-2007, some six months before the official beginning of the recession, and are now at levels that are over 1/2 million below the May 2007 peak,” said Gad Levanon, Senior Economist at The Conference Board. “Some of the largest current decline is in business, financial and management occupations, but labor demand is down as well in a wide range of other jobs such as sales, food service, transportation and repair. Healthcare workers, however, are still in demand.”
Thirty-five of the top 52 metro areas post over-the-year declines in job demand. Of the 10 metro areas with the largest numbers of advertised vacancies, only Washington, DC has more vacancies than in November 2007.
“With the November drop in labor demand, and an anticipated increase in the number of unemployed when the federal unemployment numbers for November are released on Friday, we expect that gap to widen even more,” said Levanon.
Popularity: 9% [?]
December 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I’m confused by this story. Online ad drops where? Monster.com? Idealist? Careerbuilder?
What about the shift from advertisement-generated job boards to organic social networks? For instance, it doesn’t cost anything for a company to post a vacancy on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Do the numbers account for such?
December 4th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Ari:
Here is how the board generates its data (taken from their web site):
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 but will continue 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.
December 5th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Interesting data. In the UK we are seeing that in November 07 there were about 30k/day new jobs being posted online across the UK and that this has dropped to about 20k/day a 1/3 drop. Our job search engine is now tracking roughly 601k jobs a drop of 300k vs. last year. We think that these numbers are below the replacement rate and that unemployment will continue to rise here.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:41 am
The numbers make sense, at least anecdotally. Run a local search on any of the leading boards, ignore the work-at-home scams, and see what the numners tell you.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Here’s an interesting quote from NY Times CEO regarding their Q4 2008 online job ad revenue-
“The most painful hit, however, was on the classified front”. Robinson said that combined print and online job ads plummeted 43.5 percent. “Online employment ad revs also fell 35.7 percent in Q4, which were in line with December’s numbers, which saw online recruitment dollar’s fall 36 percent.” – Janet Robinson, CEO New York Times
So NY Times online job ads shrunk 43% in Q4. That’s an enormous downturn but do you really think that in one quarter, the total universe of job postings dropped 43%? Of course not. At most the universe of job listings fell 20% from all stats I have seen. If you have others, please share. I believe certain job sites are seeing a much larger loss in job postings as a direct result of employers abandoning their technology and pricing models in search of less risky/expensive providers. Right now, there are lots of habits changing and new ones forming for both employers and job seekers.