Advertised Job Openings Dropped Sharply in December

Online advertised job vacancies declined 507,000 to 3,861,000 in December, according to The Conference Board’s Help-Wanted Online Data Series (HWOL) released on Wednesday.  The December loss brought the monthly total of online advertised vacancies below 4 million for the first time since July 2006, two and one-half years ago. In 2008, there were on average170,000 fewer ads each month than in 2007.    

“The sharp December drop in online advertised vacancies is another indication that the economy has not reached bottom,” said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. “The widespread nature of the decline in employers’ demand for workers – both across geographies and across occupations – does not bode well for an employment upturn in the first half of 2009.”

The effect of lower employer demand combined with increasing unemployment makes it more difficult for the unemployed to find jobs, and The Conference Board estimates that unemployed construction workers face the greatest scarcity of jobs.

In Missouri, there were 8,100 fewer advertised job vacancies than a year earlier, while there were 17,400 fewer openings in Illinois. Using an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent for Missouri and 7.3 percent for Illinois, The Conference Board estimates there are 2.44 unemployed workers for every vacant job in Missouri and 3.08 unemployed workers for every vacant job in Illinois. Both rates are above the national rate of 2.36 unemployed workers per job vacancy. In both Illinois and Missouri the number of advertised job openings tracked by The Conference Board has been trending downward since August 2008.

Metropolitan St. Louis fared worse than Missouri as a whole. The Conference Board reported 9,000 fewer advertised job vacancies in St. Louis than a year earlier. Using an unemployment rate of 7.3 percent, they calculated that there are 2.61 unemployed people in St. Louis for every vacant job.

Construction, architecture and engineering were among the categories showing a more than 20 percent decline in advertised job openings nationwide since December 2007. The Conference Board estimates that construction is the occupation with the highest discrepancy between supply and demand with 21 unemployed construction workers for every vacant construction job. And even though job openings in architecture and engineering fell 32 percent over the last year, The Conference Board estimates that there still are more job openings than there are unemployed architects and engineers with only 0.63 unemployed architects and engineers for every job opening in those fields.

The Conference Board’s supply/demand rates are meant only to provide a measure of the relative tightness of labor markets. They are not meant to suggest that the occupations of the unemployed directly align with the occupations of the advertised vacancies.

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