Online advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations fell for the second month in a row, 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 fell by 31,500 in August to 542,500.
According to the board, the drop was largely due to decreases in advertised vacancies for family and general practitioners, physicians and surgeons, general internists, obstetricians and gynecologists.
Labor demand for healthcare support occupations also dropped in August, with job vacancies decreasing by 2,900 to 108,900. The board said this decrease reflects a reduced demand for physical and occupational therapist assistants. There were 2.6 unemployed for every advertised vacancy in healthcare support.
Because healthcare is a broad field, the labor market varies substantially from the higher-paying practitioner and technical jobs to the lower-paying support occupations.
In July, 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 2-to-1, and the average wage in these occupations is $33.51 per hour.
In sharp contrast, the average wage for healthcare support occupations is $12.84 per hour, and there were more than two unemployed looking for work in the field for every advertised vacancy.
Nationally, online job demand fell in August after rising in July, according to the board. Online advertised vacancies fell by 57,100 listings to 4,236,000 in August.
The gap between the number of unemployed and advertised vacancies (the supply/demand rate) stood at 3.40 unemployed for every advertised vacancy in July, but is down from its peak of 4.73 in October 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.