Real Estate News
California metro areas lead in online job ads
Nationwide growth in October remains uneven
"A weakening national situation is not good news for the Gulf Coast area," said Goldstein. "Some workers seem reluctant to move to an area where the labor market was already weak. There are also fears that because a sizable part of the Gulf Coast economy lacks economic diversity and is overly dependent on tourism, overall business may not be robust even after rebuilding efforts are complete."
The 19 percent increase in new online job postings in the West South Central region included sharp increases in job ads in Houston and Oklahoma City, as well as increases in the other four metropolitan areas (Austin, Dallas, New Orleans, San Antonio) reported separately in this region. In the Middle Atlantic and New England regions, where the number of new first-time job ads fell in October (5.8 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively), the declines were widespread. Virtually all the major metropolitan areas in these regions suffered declines – including dips in new online job offers in Boston, Providence and Hartford, as well as in Philadelphia, Rochester, Pittsburgh and New York.
Latest online job offerings reveal an uneven, mixed trend in most areas of the country. Latest figures in the South Atlantic region, which includes Florida, Delaware and Maryland, show that new job ads were flat (up 1 percent for the month). Online job gains in Tampa, Orlando and Washington, D.C., were offset by declines in Miami, Atlanta and Baltimore. Job ads were up 4.9 percent in the East South Central region (Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky). The Midwest regions of East North Central and West North Central rose 2.5 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively, while the Mountain region (Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana) was up 5.2 percentand the Pacific region rose 4.3 percent.
Like The Conference Board's long-running Help-Wanted Advertising Index of print ads (which has been published since 1951), the new online series is not a direct measure of job vacancies. The level of ads in both print and online may change for reasons not related to overall job demand.