Benefits January 3, 2007

Online Job Postings Fall 10% in December

January 3, 2006 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The number of online job vacancies took a 10% dive in December by 366,700, but was up 17% from the same period last year, according to results released Wednesday by The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series.
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The board mostly attributes the fall in the number of job openings to a typical end-of-the-year hiring slump.

According to the hiring index, the regions that saw the greatest drop in the number of job postings were the New England, West North Central and South Atlantic regions. Over the year, the West South Central region and the Pacific region had the largest growth in vacancies, with 34% and 27% increases, respectively.

The states with the largest declines were Florida, down 35,600; New York, down 22,000; Massachusetts, down 20,000; Pennsylvania, down 17,600; and Minnesota, down 7,700. North Dakota was the only state to post in increase, moving up a slight 300 open positions.

As far as metropolitan areas, Boston saw the greatest dip in online vacancies (-15,900), followed by New York (-15,200), Washington, DC (-12,500), Miami (-11,200) and Philadelphia (-7,000).

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