Online Labor Demand Declined in November

The Conference Board launches Experimental Help Wanted OnLine (HWOL) Index

- Online demand in mining grew by 22 percent over the past year, faster than all other industries

- Among occupation groups, computer and legal related ads experienced the fastest growth in the past 12 months

- The Northeast region saw the fastest job ads growth in the past year

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Dec 05, 2018, 10:00 ET

NEW YORK, Dec. 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine (HWOL) Index declined in November. The Index now stands at 97.1 (July 2018=100), down from 99.8 in October.

Beginning with the December 2018 release, The Conference Board launched the Help Wanted OnLine® (HWOL) Index and the revised Help Wanted OnLine® Data Series. The HWOL Index measures changes over time in advertised online job vacancies, improving upon the prior Data Series' ability to assess local labor market trends. The index does not measure differences in the number of ads among geographies, occupations, or industries. It measures the change in ads relative to the base period (July 2018=100). An increase in the index is associated with an increase in job openings and hiring activity in the US economy. The revised HWOL Data Series reflects a new methodology and universe of online job ads. Both the revised HWOL Data Series and the HWOL Index begin in January 2012 (see technical note).

"Despite the declines in October and November, the HWOL Index still remains at a level consistent with strong hiring activity," said Gad Levanon, Chief Economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "We expect employment growth to remain strong and labor turnover rates to increase as the labor market gets tighter. Recruiters will be as busy as ever finding qualified workers for new jobs and replacing workers who have moved on to other jobs. With the slack in the labor market shrinking, the average time to fill job openings is likely to keep breaking records. In such an environment, we expect employers to continue raising wages faster, accelerating wage growth by about 0.5 percentage points by the end of 2019."

The release schedule, national historic table and technical note are available on The Conference Board website, http://www.conference-board.org/data/helpwantedonline.cfm. The underlying data for The Conference Board HWOL is collected by CEB, Inc.

About The Conference Board
The Conference Board is a member-focused think tank that provides trusted insights for what's ahead. We are a non-partisan, not-for-profit entity holding 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt status in the United States. https://www.conference-board.org/

SOURCE The Conference Board