Even as online job postings have declined over the last year, the effort to use the Web to fill healthcare jobs remains steady.
Some 219,000 jobs for healthcare practitioners were listed online as of this past May, the most of any other job category, according to data from The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series.
Online postings for healthcare jobs outdistanced management jobs (191,200), computer and mathematical staff (183,000), financial operations (170,200) and administrative support (169,000) among the top job categories listed online.
According to the latest federal hourly wage data, wages average about $31 an hour for healthcare practitioners.
Overall, data from the conference board shows continued weakness in the job market. It reported nearly 3.8 million job vacancies this past May, a decline of 579,000, or 13.2 percent, from the number of listings in May 2007.
May represented the third consecutive month of declines for the nation as a whole, on a year-over-year basis.
"May shows a slight recovery from the large April decline, but overall the number of online advertised vacancies has been on a downward trend for the past several months. The demand for labor will likely be sluggish this summer," said Gad Levanon, an economist at The Conference Board. "This lackluster job outlook is clearly a contributing factor in consumer confidence shrinking to its lowest point in nearly two decades, as reported by The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey."
The number of advertised vacancies declined from May 2007 to May 2008 in 43 states (compared with 44 states in April 2008), and all states experienced a slowing in the year-over-year growth rate. The April employment data released by the BLS indicates that 43 of the 50 states also experienced a slowing in their year-over-year growth rate of employment.