by Karen Brune Mathis
Managing Editor
While it might be a summer lull, a drop in Jacksonville online help-wanted postings from April to May didn’t offset the year-over-year gain.
From May 2010 to the past month, online job postings rose 23 percent to 21,598 jobs, reports WorkSource, the Florida work force organization serving Northeast Florida.
Over the month, the number of postings dropped by 767, or 3.4 percent, but gained 4,048 over the year.
“Despite a seasonal lull, we see economic activity increase and more people going to work,” said Candace Moody, WorkSource vice president of communications.
She said that in 2010, the May numbers were lower than April as well.
The year-over-year increase raises expectations of more job creation.
“There are still a lot of worries about job creation being back for good, but the good news is job postings don’t measure all of the economic activity. People are going back to work through contracting and consulting, which don’t show up as jobs. They show up as vendors,” said Moody.
The top 15 online jobs advertised in May were led by openings for truck drivers, as they did in April. The others included most of the same titles as those in April, although in a slightly different order of need.
The report is made monthly. Data is collected by The Conference Board, and the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation has provided a subscription to each of the 24 work force regions in Florida.
The Conference Board, based in New York, is a nonprofit, independent source of economic and business information. It was founded in 1916.
Warren May, economic manager for information delivery and analysis for the agency, said that except for May, demand has been generally rising in the region.
He said that May also saw a slight dip in the number of full-time job ads and a corresponding increase in part-time and contract ads.
“That appears to be changing so far in June, with an uptick in ads for full-time work. That is a good indicator,” he said.
The national recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. Since then, online job demand in the WorkSource region of Northeast Florida has risen by almost 7,400 jobs.
“Labor demand, measured by online advertised vacancies, bottomed out in January 2009 in the region,” said the WorkSource report. Demand is up by 10,821 openings since then.
The state’s regional work force organizations are primarily funded by federal money and are designed to match people seeking jobs with openings and also to train people for positions. The regional organizations are governed by private-sector boards of directors.
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Top advertised occupations May