Online advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners, technical occupations and support personnel increased significantly in October.
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 October, rising 26,800 to 543,100. Organization officials said the gain reflects increases in demand for registered nurses as well as physical and occupational therapists.
The average wage in these occupations is $33.51 an hour.
Labor demand for healthcare support occupations also rose in October, with job vacancies increasing 7,800 to 111,600. 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 labor market varies substantially from the higher-paying practitioner and technical jobs to the lower-paying support occupations.
In September, the latest month for which unemployment data is available, advertised vacancies for the broad healthcare occupational category outnumbered the unemployed looking for work in the field by more than 2-to-1.
Nationally, online job demand also rose from September to October, according to the Conference Board. Online advertised vacancies increased by 113,700 to 4,409,800 in October.
Nationally, there are 10.5 million more unemployed than advertised vacancies.
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.