NEW YORK – Online advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners, technical staff and support personnel dropped in February, according to the Conference Board's latest report.
The Conference Board's "Help Wanted OnLine Data Series" reveals that online vacancies for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations fell by 4,300 in February, to 600,100. The organization said the drop reflects decreases in advertised vacancies for registered nurses and occupational physical therapists.
Labor demand for healthcare support occupations also fell in February, with job vacancies dropping 4,200 to 139,000.
[Compare the February report to the increase in listings noted in the January report; BLS stats also showed job increases in early 2011]
Because healthcare is a broad field, the relative tightness of the labor market varies substantially from the higher-paying practitioner and technical jobs to the lower-paying support occupations.
In January, the latest month for which unemployment data is available, advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners or technical occupations outnumbered the unemployed looking for work in the field by more than 3-to-1. The average wage in these occupations is $33.51 an hour.
In sharp contrast, the average wage for healthcare support occupations is $12.84 an hour, and there were two unemployed persons looking for work in the field for every advertised vacancy.
Nationally, online job demand dropped slightly from January to February, according to the Conference Board. Online advertised vacancies fell by 27,400 to 4,245,600 in February.
Even with the February drop-off, labor demand has risen 1.41 million since the series low point in April 2009. According to the Conference Board, this increase now offsets approximately 80 percent of the 1.76 million drop in ad volume during the two-year downturn period from April 2007 through April 2009.
The "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.
