As I was searching the web this morning came across an interesting site for The Conference Board. The company is “the world’s preeminent business membership and research organization.” They have been around for 90 years and are best known for the Consumer Confidence Index and the Leading Economic Indicators that you see referenced so often.
They provide an economic analysis based on a monthly basis is the total number of online job ads. The report and analysis they provide is amazing – a total of 17 pages of information for the month of May alone!
Although the total online job ads were 4,374,400 in May, a 0.2 percent increase from April, the number of vacancies is up dramatically from a year ago. The number of advertised vacancies rose 29% over the year (May’06 – May’07). There was also a total of 2,812,900 new ads that did not appear in the month of April.
They also breakdown these numbers by region and state. Some of the analysis they provide in this report: ad rates (number of posted vacancies per 100 people), supply demand ratio (number of unemployed/number of posted vacancies), trends by state, and trends by occupation just to name a few.
Here are some interesting stats from their report (pdf):
Top states by total number of posted vacancies
- California – 705,200
- Texas – 368,400
- New York – 313,700
- Florida – 288,100
- Illinois – 207,900
Top states with the highest ad rates (number of posted vacancies per 100 people)
- Alaska – 5.23
- Massachusetts – 5.04
- Colorado – 4.84
- Delaware – 4.76
- Oregon – 4.42
Top states with the lowest supply/demand rate (number of unemployed/number of posted vacancies)
- Montana – .56
- Virginia – .68
- Utah – .68
- Colorado – .72
- Wyoming – .77
- Nebraska – .77
The full report provides data on all 50 states in case you are wondering how your state stacks up.