June Shelp, vice president at The Conference Board, called the January surge "welcome news" after relatively flat job growth during the second half of 2010, but she cautioned that it's too early to call it a trend. "Last year, after a promising start (up about 350,000 in January 2010), labor demand fizzled, and the last half of 2010 was actually flat with no appreciable gains in job demand," Shelp said. "Hopefully the January 2011 increase suggests that employers are seeing a pickup in their businesses and labor demand will continue to improve throughout this year."
The board's Help Wanted Online Data Series tracks more than 1,000 online job boards across the United States. Forty-nine states posted gains in online job listings. Rhode Island reported a decline of 200 job postings.
The surge in skilled healthcare practitioner job listings was fueled by a demand for registered nurses, and family and general practitioners. There were three job listings for every healthcare practitioner job seeker, with the average salary of $33.51.
Healthcare support saw an increase in many areas including home health aides, nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants. However, there are still 2.4 workers seeking positions in healthcare support for every advertised vacancy, with pay averaging $12.84 an hour.
Hospitals created 50,100 jobs in 2010, nearly double the rate of job creation from 2009, and the entire healthcare sector - everything from allergists to X-ray technicians -- created 265,800 jobs for the year, Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary data shows.
Overall, the healthcare sector employed 13.9 million people at the end of 2010, including 4.7 million jobs at hospitals, 6 million jobs in outpatient ambulatory services, and 2.3 million jobs in physicians' offices, BLS preliminary data show.
For December, the healthcare sector recorded 35,700 payroll additions, including 8,000 hospital jobs. However, ambulatory healthcare services continues to be the major driver of healthcare job creation, with 20,600 payroll additions in December, and 160,200 payroll additions recorded in 2010, BLS preliminary data show.
The Conference Board reports that in the overall economy, online advertised vacancies grew by 438,000 in January, to 4.2 million listings, following a decline of 9,400 listings in December. With the January increase, labor demand has risen 1.44 million job postings since the series low point in April 2009. This increase now offsets approximately 80% of the 1.76 million drop in ad volume during the two-year downturn period from April 2007 through April 2009.
Even with the uptick, however, the nation's supply/demand rate stood at 3.78 unemployed people for every advertised vacancy in December (the last available unemployment data), down from a peak of 4.73 in October 2009. Nationally, there are 10.6 million more unemployed than advertised vacancies, The Conference Board reports.
John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.