Online Labor Demand Falls 292,100 in March

-- March loss offsets February gain and leaves Q1 2014 basically unchanged

-- March losses occurred in 18 of the 22 Standard Occupation Codes

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Apr 02, 2014, 10:00 ET

NEW YORK, April 2, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Online advertised vacancies declined by 292,100 in March to 4,894,100, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine® (HWOL) Data Series, released today. The February Supply/Demand rate stands at 2.0 unemployed for each vacancy with a total of 5.3 million more unemployed workers than the number of advertised vacancies.

"The March decline largely offsets the February gain and left the first quarter of 2014 with a minor drop of 50,000. It's not the start of the year we were hoping for," said June Shelp, Vice President at The Conference Board. "The flat trend that we saw throughout last year seems to have continued into the first quarter of this year."

The Supply/Demand rates show that for professional jobs like physicians and computer workers there are 3 to 5 ads for every unemployed worker, making it hard for employers to find candidates to fill their advertised jobs. The situation is quite different for occupations like construction and production workers where there are anywhere from 4 to 7 job seekers competing for every opening.

For more information, including press release and technical notes:
http://www.conference-board.org/data/helpwantedonline.cfm

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