Nationwide, online advertised vacancies were up 268,100 to about 5.2 million in February as labor demand rose in 46 states with California, Texas, Washington and Illinois rounding out the top five states for new job ads. Alaska, Alabama, Maine, and Colorado showed slight declines in labor demand, The Conference Board reported.
Compared to a year ago, the number of online advertised vacancies were up in 33 states, down in 14 and unchanged in three with 70 percent of the total increase in online job listings coming from the Midwest, The Conference Board found.
Transportation and material moving showed the biggest jump in advertised vacancies last month, up 92,700, reflecting increased demand for truck drivers, supervisors as well as stock handlers. Meanwhile, the demand for office support staff grew by 35,500 online job listings, while demand for computer and math jobs increased by 23,000.
Still, the number of job postings doesn’t tell the whole story. Just as important are the number of unemployed people seeking jobs and how much competition there is for the jobs that are available, or the supply-demand rate.
Nationwide, the supply-demand rate was 2.08, according to The Conference Board, meaning there were just over two unemployed workers for every online advertised job vacancy. In Ohio, the rate was slightly higher at 2.31.
But both the national and Ohio supply-demand rates were down from just over 3.0 a year ago.
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