NEW YORK – 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 today.
“Since April, when labor demand bottomed, monthly gains can only be described as sluggish,” said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference 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 hitting a low in April 2009, 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 (2.1 advertised vacancies per 100).
While labor demand was described as “flat” in the larger states in the West and Midwest, several large East Coast states (New York, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland) showed a modest upward trend in demand, the Conference Board said.
