Online advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners, technical staff and support personnel increased significantly in January, 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 January, rising 78,500 to 604,400. The organization said the gain reflects increases in demand for registered nurses and family practitioners.
Labor demand for healthcare support occupations also rose in January, with job vacancies increasing by 16,600 to 143,300. Contributing to the increase were more advertised vacancies for home health aides, nursing aides, orderlies and attendants.
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 December, 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 3-to-1, and the average wage in these occupations is $33.51 an hour.
In sharp contrast, the average wage for healthcare support occupations is $12.84 an hour and there were more than two unemployed persons looking for work in the field for every advertised vacancy.
Nationally, online job demand jumped sharply from December to January, according to the Conference Board. Online advertised vacancies increased by 438,000 to 4,273,000 in January.
With the January increase, labor demand has risen 1.44 million since the series low point in April 2009. According to the Conference Board, this increase now offsets approximately 80 percent of the 1.76 million drop in ad volume during the two-year downturn period from April 2007 through April 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.