Online advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners, technical occupations and support personnel fell in May, though they remained above pre-recession levels, 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 82,800 in May to 540,400.
According to the board, the drop was largely due to decreases in demand for physical and occupational therapists, registered nurses and speech pathologists.
Labor demand for healthcare support occupations also dropped in May, with job vacancies decreasing by 16,600 to 111,800, after a modest gain in April. The board said this decrease reflects less demand for workers in occupations like physical and occupational therapist assistants, nursing aides and medical assistants.
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 April, 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 nearly 3-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 remained relatively unchanged from April through May, according to the board. Online advertised vacancies fell by 1,000 listings to 4,149,000 in May.
Online job demand has been on an upward trend since October 2009, averaging 118,000 listings per month.
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.