The Conference Board Report: Online Labor Demand Rises in June After Flat First Half

Online advertised vacancies were up 155,900 to 5,060,100 in June, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine Data Series. The May Supply/Demand rate stands at 2 unemployed for each vacancy, with a total of 4.9 million more unemployed workers than the number of advertised vacancies. The number of unemployed was 9.8 million in May.

“The June increase of 155,900 is positive news. However, the net effect is that labor demand was basically flat for the first six months of 2014,” June Shelp, vice president at The Conference Board, said. “There is churn in the labor market as people change jobs. Most of the gains since last June were in the lower-paying service jobs, not the higher-paying professional jobs.”

Since June 2013, advertised vacancies for professional jobs dropped by almost 80,000 while service/production jobs gained a total of 170,000 vacancies. Since last June, employer demand has been down for the higher-paying professional jobs (average pay ranges between $34 per hour to $53 per hour). Professional occupations like managers (-8,300 jobs), business and finance workers (-11,200 jobs), and computer workers (-51,000 jobs) all dropped. In contrast, lower-paying jobs (average pay ranges from about $10 per hour to $20 per hour) gained. Transportation workers (+73,000 jobs), office support (+42,100 jobs), production workers (+19,300 jobs), and construction (+19,300 jobs) all rose.