Help-wanted postings on major US-based Internet job boards were down 4.6 percent in July due mainly to a decline in volume during a holiday week, but were still up 20 percent on a year-over-year basis, a private research group said on Monday.
The Conference Board said its measure of the total number of unduplicated online jobs fell to 4.08 million in July from about 4.28 million in June. The July figures reflect the sum of the number of ads from mid-June to mid-July.
A year ago, the figure was 3.41 million. "The monthly decline in July in large part reflects the July 4th holiday week when ad volume dropped," said Gad Levanon, economist at the Conference Board.
Levanon added online job demand is well above last year's level, but some leading economic indicators point to a small loss in momentum over the next few months. "With the typical lagged response of the labour market, we may well see a moderation in national employment growth in the second half of the year while some of the hot local markets continue to show high ad rates and low unemployment," he said.
The ADP National Employment Report, due on Wednesday, is expected to show the US private sector added 100,000 new jobs in July, down from 150,000 in June, according to a Reuters survey.
The Conference Board said online advertised jobs declined in all of the nine US census regions in July. California was the state with the most advertised vacancies in the latest period with 662,600, followed by Texas, New York and Florida.
Adjusting for the size of the state civilian labor force, Alaska led in offerings with 4.69 online job ads per 100 people, followed by Montana with 4.65 and Nevada with 4.61.