A steady move toward online employment recruitment is leading to the demise of a long-standing national economic indicator.
The Conference Board announced today that it would cease publishing its newspaper-based Help-Wanted Advertising Index after July 1.
The business research organization will continue to track newspaper help-wanted advertising lineage in major metropolitan newspapers for research purposes only. But the economic measure distributed to the public will be only its companion Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series.
“Because print advertising no longer comprehensively captures changes in labor market demand, the Conference Board will focus its efforts on other indicators that better reflect today’s labor market,” the organization said in a printed statement released to reporters.
The announcement came in connection with its newspaper help-wanted report for March.
The board’s newspaper-based index stood at 19 in March, down from 29 in March 2007. But the movement from print to online ads has made it increasingly difficult to use the print indicator as a measure of labor market health.
“Print want ad volume has shown a slightly declining trend over the past half year,” said the board’s labor economist, Ken Goldstein.
But recently, he added, “Data for online job ads have also started to edge lower. The cumulative impact of the housing crisis, financial market turmoil, higher energy and other prices is slowing the overall economy and resulting in job cuts and reduced hiring intentions — with the prospect that declines may steepen.”
Goldstein said the help-wanted data indicate that the labor market “is likely to get worse before it gets better.”
Join the discussion
Share your observations and experiences about news. Lively, open debate is the goal, but please refrain from personal attacks or comments that are racist, vulgar or otherwise inappropriate. If you see an inappropriate comment, please click the "Report as violation" link to notify a KansasCity.com editor. Thanks for your feedback.