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Healthcare Online Job Postings Plummet in October

 |  By John Commins  
   November 01, 2011

Online advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations fell by 25,000 listings in October, snapping what had been two consecutive months of impressive gains for the sector, the Conference Board reports.

Healthcare practitioners and technicians—with 506,000 online job listings—posted the largest declines in online advertised vacancies among the top 10 occupation groups in the overall economy.

There were 17,900 and 26,300 new online job listings for healthcare practitioners and technicians in September and August, respectively, following a decrease of 61,200 listings in July.

The drop in job postings for healthcare practitioners was largely fueled by decreased ads for registered nurses and family and general practitioners. However, the number of advertised vacancies for these highly skilled medical professionals continues to outnumber job-seekers by 2.6 to one, with an average hourly wage of $34.27, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted Online report, which tracks more than 1,000 online job boards across the United States.


Healthcare support positions fell by 1,700 listings to 114,100 in October. There were 2.6 healthcare support job seekers for every job opening, and the positions paid$12.94 an hour, on average, the Conference Board reported.

In the overall economy, online job listings fell by 13,600 posts in October to about 3.9 million, after losing 44,000 job listings in September, 164,000 listings in August, 217,000 listings in July, and 100,000 listings in June. Nationally there were 10 million more unemployed people than job listings, or 3.5 unemployed people for every online advertised job vacancy.

“The good news is that labor demand did not deteriorate further in October, but at the same time we have no clear sign that demand is picking up,” said June Shelp, vice president at the Conference Board, in a media release.

The drop in demand of 513,000 job listings over the last seven months has largely offset the gain of 763,000 listings in early 2011, Shelp said, and narrowed the average monthly gain for 2011 to 25,000 job listings.

 

John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.

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