Financial Sector Job Listings Fall

NU Online News Service, March 30, 12:56 p.m. EDT

Advertised vacancies in March for jobs in the business and financial operations sector declined by 83,600 on a not seasonally adjusted basis from the March 2008 level, according to a report released today.

The findings were released by the New York-based Conference Board, a not-for-profit business membership and research organization, as part of The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series.

According to the board, on a seasonally adjusted basis, online advertised vacancies dropped 100,000 to 3,248,000 this March.

Labor demand overall, the organization said, is down more than 30 percent from year-ago levels for a wide range of occupations in addition to business and finance. It said other hard hit sectors were management, office and administrative support, computer and mathematical jobs, and architectural and engineering.

"The list of occupations experiencing severe declines in labor demand included both high-paying occupations like management where wages average over $46 an hour to lower-paying occupations like office and administrative support at $15 an hour.

Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board said, "The March numbers indicate that we are not at the bottom of the employment cycle but that the declines in labor demand may be slowing.

"The March decline is significant but substantially less than the 500,000 monthly drops we were seeing in December and January. When the federal employment numbers are released this Friday, we still expect a very large drop and last month's gap of nine million between labor demand (HWOL) and supply (unemployment) will widen further."

He added that April and May, when businesses generally increase their hiring, will be a good indication whether labor demand is beginning to turn around.

Mr. Levanon noted that in March, there were slightly over two advertised vacancies for every 100 people in the labor force compared to slightly over three vacancies per 100 in March 2008.

The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series measures the number of new, first-time online jobs and jobs reposted from the previous month on more than 1,200 major Internet job boards and smaller job boards that serve niche markets and smaller geographic areas.