Jobs Online Increased in May

With unemployment rising throughout the nation, jobs online have been decreasing for some time now. According to the Conference Board’s most recent Help-Wanted Online Data Series report, May marked the end of six months of decline in the number of jobs posted online.

The report went on to say that in May employers increased the number of job listings on the web, with employers adding 250,000 positions. This means that last month there were a total of 3,367,000 jobs online.

According to the Conference Board, this was the first increase in jobs since October of last year. During that month, employers added 21,000 positions. The report went on to say that May’s increase was the largest the country has seen in over two years, since October of 2006.

Despite the increased number of positions posted by employers last month, the number of vacancies listed online is down by 1,152,000 positions in comparison to last year. This marks a decline of 25 percent.

“The May bounce in labor demand is a very welcome sign,” said The Conference Board’s Senior Economist Gad Levanon in the recent release. “April and may are both months when businesses typically step up their demand for workers. This year, while April was weak, by May employers were placing ads for workers in numerous locations across the nation. Over the last four months, there are now about a half dozen states where the drop in labor demand shows signs of leveling off and another handful of states show some very moderate increases. Labor demand typically leads the trend in both employment and unemployment, so positive signals on labor demand are always important. Even with the current positive signs, the likely outlook is for unemployment to continue to rise and employment to fall at more modest level through the summer. In April (the latest unemployment data until May numbers are released), there were 10.6 million more unemployed workers than advertised vacancies.”

According to the report, 43 of the 50 states saw increase in the number of job listings online in May. During the course of the last four months the states that have seen job losses level off or even a small increase include: New Jersey, Florida, Georgia, Maryland and Hawaii.

"Over the last few months, we have not seen any big increases in labor demand, but in some states there seems to be clear signs that employers are advertising again for workers," Levanon went on to say. "In addition, about one fourth of the states are showing some signs of labor demand bottoming."

The jobs that saw the largest increases included: management, computer/math positions, healthcare and administrative support.