About 3,386,000 online job postings appeared on leading Internet job boards in November, a 106,500 increase from October’s 3,279,500, the Conference Board reported yesterday.
“Since April, when labor demand bottomed, monthly gains can only be described as sluggish,” said Gad Levanon, senior economist at the board.
“We have yet to see a significant increase in employers’ demand for labor, and, until we see job openings pick up, it will be hard to bring down the unemployment rate. The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is about 12.3 million, with 4.8 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy.”
Online labor demand has been modestly positive since April, with average monthly increases of about 32,000.
In November, there were 2.2 advertised vacancies for every 100 people in the labor force — a slight rise from October, which had 2.1 advertised vacancies per 100 people.
