Online job advertising in Pittsburgh increases 17.5%

PITTSBURGH, October 4, 2005 – The number of online job ads for August was 14,800 in the Pittsburgh MSA; up 17.5% from July after remaining relatively flat from June to July. This increase outperformed the Middle Atlantic MSAs and a select group of regional peer cities (below) according to a new Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series™ released by The Conference Board in conjunction with The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and post-gazette.com.

In the context of the working population, there were 1.21 online job ads for every 100 people in the Pittsburgh workforce according to information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That compares favorably to 1.01 in July and 1.05 in June.

Nationally, the number of new online job ads rose to 2,130,000 in the month of August, according to the September 20 Conference Board release. This latest monthly figure is up over four percent from early summer (June 2005), with gains in eight of the nine Census regions.

As Pittsburgh’s largest local source for print and online help wanted advertising, the Post-Gazette displays on post-gazette.com all classified employment ads purchased for in-paper display. The results below, combined with local results from The Conference Board, provide and accurate view of employment advertising trends in the Pittsburgh Market.

The following table demonstrates month over month changes by category as printed in the Post-Gazette. This is a dimension not provided by The Conference Board but valuable in terms of spotting industry trends and observing seasonality.

The July-to-August results are mixed. Of the largest categories in terms of ad volume, General Help Wanted was up nearly 10% on top of a 5% gain from June to July while Health Care ads were down in excess of 12%, wiping out a 15% increase in July.

The Conference Board’s Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series™ measures the number of new, first-time online job ads posted on more than 1,200 major Internet job boards and smaller job boards that serve niche markets and smaller geographic areas. The Online Series is not a direct measure of job vacancies. The level of ads in print and online may change for reasons not related to overall job demand. Over the years, analysts have applied various data-smoothing techniques to the Help-Wanted Advertising Index of print ads and determined that it continues to be a useful measure of the state of labor demand in the U.S.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is Western Pennsylvania’s largest newspaper and post-gazette.com is the region’s most visited web site. Together they reach more than one million people every week. The Post-Gazette has served the Pittsburgh community, its readers and advertisers as the region’s indispensable source of news, advertising and information for more than two centuries.