Online advertised vacancies were down 43,500 in September to 3,947,100, according a Conference Board study released today. The September drop follows a decline of 164,000 in August and a decrease of 217,000 in July. The Supply/Demand ratio stands at 3.50, meaning there were 3.5 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy in August, the latest monthly data available for unemployment. Nationally, there are 10 million more people officially unemployed (9.98 million) than advertised vacancies under the “no jobs” Obama Administration.
The number of advertised vacancies exceeded the number of unemployed only in North Dakota, where the Supply/Demand rate was 0.94. States with the next lowest rates included South Dakota (1.39), Nebraska (1.54), Alaska (1.69), Vermont (1.78), and New Hampshire (1.89).
States with the highest Supply/Demand rate are led by Mississippi (7.39), where there are over 7 unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy, followed by Alabama (5.29), South Carolina (5.29), and Kentucky (5.08).
“In the last six months, labor demand has experienced a drop of 500,000, cutting sharply into the gain of 763,000 at the beginning of the year,” said June Shelp, Vice President at The Conference Board. “This narrows the average monthly gain for 2011 to 29,000.”
In a release the Conference board noted that slowdown varies widely for different occupations. In legal occupations, labor demand stalled as early as the beginning of 2010, but in the last six months it has dropped 23% to 21,600 in September.
In contrast, advertised vacancies for production workers gained steadily since mid-2009 until July 2011, but in the last two months, it dipped further. It is now down 10% to 117,000 in September. The U.S. of course lacks an industrial policy that protects, let along creates, manufacturing jobs – the only major economy in the world to ignores this vital sector.
The Conference Board said that the Supply/Demand ratio only provides a measure of relative tightness of the individual State labor markets and does not suggest that the occupations of the unemployed directly align with the occupations of the advertised vacancies.
Since the beginning of the year, labor demand was down among a number of high-paying occupations, many of them related to manufacturing. With the September declines, Computer and Mathematical Science occupations were down 4% (-23,000) since January while Management positions were down 11% (-48,000). Community and Social Service positions were down 15,000, a drop of 24%, since January. However, the job market was not as difficult for these job-seekers. Based on August data, there are about 2 unemployed for every advertised vacancy in Community and social service (2.10) and Management (1.85). In contrast, there are about 3 openings for every unemployed job-seeker in Computer and mathematical science (0.29).
