Conference Board News Release (07/02/14)

Online advertised vacancies rose 155,900 to 5.1 million in June, according to the Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine Data Series. The May supply and demand rate stands at two unemployed workers for each vacancy, with a total of 4.9 million more unemployed workers than the number of advertised vacancies. The number of unemployed was 9.8 million in May.

“The June increase of 155,900 is positive news. However, the net effect is that labor demand was basically flat for the first six months of 2014,” says June Shelp, vice president at the Conference Board. “There is churn in the labor market as people change jobs. Most of the gains since last June were in the lower-paying service jobs, not the higher-paying professional jobs.” Since June 2013, advertised vacancies for professional jobs dropped by almost 80,000 while service and production jobs gained a total of 170,000 vacancies.