NEW YORK – About 4,273,000 online job postings appeared on leading Internet job boards in January, up 438,400 from December, The Conference Board reported Monday.
Including January, demand is up 1.44 million from the series low point in April 2009, erasing about 80% of the 1.76 million drop in ad volume during the two-year downturn period from April 2007 through April 2009.
“The very strong seasonal gain to start 2011 is welcome news following seven months of essentially flat U.S. labor demand,” said June Shelp, vice president at The Conference Board. “Last year, after a promising start (up about 350,000 in January 2010), labor demand fizzled, and the last half of 2010 was actually flat with no appreciable gains in job demand. Hopefully the January 2011 increase suggests that employers are seeing a pickup in their businesses and labor demand will continue to improve throughout this year."
The Supply/Demand rate for the U.S. in December (the latest month for which unemployment numbers are available) stands at 3.78, indicating that there are close to 4 unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy. Nationally, there are 10.6 million more unemployed workers than advertised vacancies.
