Online advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners, technical occupations and support personnel increased significantly in March, according to a report released this week.
The Conference Board's latest "Help Wanted OnLine Data Series" reveals that online vacancies for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations experienced the largest increase of any job category in March, rising 88,100 to 627,000. The organization said the gain reflects increases in demand for physical and occupational therapists, registered nurses and speech pathologists.
Labor demand for healthcare support occupations also rose in March, with job vacancies increasing 13,800 to 125,400. Contributing to this month's increase were more advertised vacancies for physical and occupational therapist assistants, mirroring the increases in the demand for practitioners in these areas.
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 February, 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, and the average wage in these occupations is $32.64 an hour.
In sharp contrast, the average wage for healthcare support occupations is $12.66 an hour and there were almost three unemployed looking for work in the field for every advertised vacancy.
Nationally, online job demand was essentially unchanged from February to March, according to the Conference Board. Online advertised vacancies slipped 29,600 to 3,927,000 in March.
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.