Online job advertisements fell by 131,000 in April and the drop has resulted in a decline of more than 1.32 million advertised vacancies in the last six months.
The national report by The Conference Board follows a dip of 100,000 ads in March, but is well below the record declines of 507,000 and 506,000 in December and January.
Online job ads have decreased 30 percent since November.
Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board, said that while the decline in labor demand may be slowing and April and May are when businesses typically step up hiring efforts, that was not the case this April.
“This year, that bounce may be more evident next month,” Levanon said in a news release. “With the April drop, the gap between labor demand and supply will widen further … In March, there were 10 million more unemployed workers than advertised vacancies.”
The Conference Board’s monthly Help-Wanted Online Data Series measures the number of new online jobs and openings reposted from the previous month on more than 1,200 major Internet job boards and smaller Web sites that serve niche markets.
The downward trend in employer demand coupled with the monthly increases in unemployment is making it increasingly difficult for the unemployed to find jobs, the group said.
There were about 3.11 million online ads in April, a drop from the 4.3 million online job ads in November 2008 and 3.6 million the previous April.
Michigan had more than eight unemployed people for every advertised vacancy, followed by Mississippi and Indiana with a little over seven unemployed people for every advertised vacancy and Kentucky and North Carolina with just under seven. For the second straight month, no state had fewer unemployed people than advertised vacancies.
All of the most populous states in the Midwest and the West continued to post ad declines and 49…