The Conference Board Reports Online Job Demand Down 66,700 in June

Nationally, labor demand shows modest growth of 35,000 since March.

States show a mixed picture in June: 24 posting gains and 26 posting declines.

Modest growth in job demand evident in Florida and Georgia over last few
months.

Occupations: June advertised vacancies for healthcare support occupations are
running at the same level as last year.

NEW YORK, June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Online advertised vacancies declined 66,700
to 3,294,800 in June, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online
Data Series (HWOL)(TM) released today. In the five months since January,
online labor demand has dropped a relatively modest 71,000, in sharp contrast
to the 1,200,000 decline in the previous five months from August 2008 to
January 2009.

"We are not out of the woods yet, but job demand has definitely stabilized
since January," said Gad Levanon, Senior Economist at The Conference Board.
"Although there is some bounce in the monthly numbers, the number of online
advertised vacancies has held steady in the last three months (up a modest
35,000). Across the U.S., it is an increasingly mixed picture with some
states, like Florida and Georgia, showing some modest gains, others such as
New York, North Carolina holding steady, and some, like California and
Pennsylvania, yet to show real improvement."

Regional and State Highlights

Modest strength seen in the South in states like Florida and Georgia.

Among the 20 most populous states, unemployed people outnumber advertised
vacancies (Supply/Demand) and range from a low of roughly 2 to 1 (Maryland) to
about 10 to 1 (Michigan).

The number of advertised vacancies declined in June in all four regions of the
country (Northeast, South, Midwest and West), ranging from a modest drop of
3,400 in the Southern region to 18,100 in the Northeast, 13,400 in the Midwest
and 10,300 in the West. "The June data shows an almost even split between the
number of states with increases (24) and the number with declines (26)," said
Levanon. "But there are clear signs that the employers are advertising again
for workers and in some states the trend over the last few months has
improved."

The June decrease of 3,400 in the Southern region reflected the contrasting
movement of some of the largest states. Of these states, Florida experienced a
sizeable gain, 9,200, and was followed by Georgia (2,900), North Carolina
(900) and Virginia (100). Texas and Maryland both experienced declines, -5,100
and -1,400 respectively. Among the smaller states in the South, West Virginia
(4,100), Kentucky (3,700) and Arkansas (1,600) increased in June. Oklahoma
(-1,100) and Louisiana (-800) both declined in June and continued their
relative flat trends since January.

In the Northeast, all four of the largest states posted declines in June. New
York showing the largest decrease (5,300), however looking at the trend since
January, job demand in New York is basically flat. New Jersey, which was down
2,600 in June, has experienced a modest increase of 1,700 over the last four
months. Pennsylvania (-2,700) and Massachusetts (-2,200) decreased modestly in
June, and both states continue their downward trend. Among the states with
smaller populations in the region, Maine dropped a modest 100 in June and
overall has shown a flat trend since January.

In the West, changes in labor demand among the four most populous states in
June were split between increases in Arizona and Colorado and decreases in
California and Washington. Arizona and Colorado increased 4,600 and 3,400
respectively and thereby returned to their levels at the beginning of the
year, although still 40 percent below their levels in June 2008. California
was down 15,900 in June and continued its downward trend. Washington reversed
only a small number of last month's gains with a decline of 1,300 jobs. Among
the states with smaller populations, Hawaii and New Mexico are two states in
the West where the trend has been steady since January. In June, Hawaii rose
800 while New Mexico was up 1,000.

In the Midwest, Wisconsin declined by 4,300, Minnesota decreased by 2,300, and
Missouri declined by 1,800. Illinois experienced the largest increase (1,900)
and was followed by Michigan (800) and Ohio (700). Ohio continues to be the
Midwest state where drops in labor demand have leveled off over the last
couple of months.

The Supply/Demand rate for the U.S. in May (the latest month for which
unemployment numbers are available) was at 4.32, down slightly from 4.40 in
April but still indicating that there are more than 4 unemployed workers for
every online advertised vacancy. Among the states, the highest Supply/Demand
rate is in Michigan (9.95), or nearly 10 unemployed people for every
advertised vacancy. Other states where there are over 6 unemployed for every
advertised vacancy include Indiana (7.73), Kentucky (7.33), Ohio (6.54), North
Carolina (6.49), and Mississippi (6.30). North Dakota (1.41) and Nebraska
(1.44) have some of the lowest rates.

It should be noted that the Supply/Demand rate only provides a measure of
relative tightness of the individual State labor markets and does not suggest
that the occupations of the unemployed directly align with the occupations of
the advertised vacancies.

OCCUPATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

Online advertised vacancies rise in June for the occupational category Arts,
Design, Entertainment, Sports and are in line with year ago levels.

Construction and Legal among the categories that are unchanged in June but
well below year ago levels.

Labor Demand dips in June for Sales occupations and several white collar
occupational categories including Computer and Mathematical.

Almost half of the 66,700 monthly decline in June in online advertised
vacancies reflects decreases in Computer and Mathematical Science (-19,900),
Sales and Related (-11,700) occupations. Advertised vacancies in both of these
occupations are over 30 percent below levels of a year ago. Other large
occupation groups with declines in June were Health Practitioners and
Technical occupations (-10,400), and Architecture and Engineering (-10,000).

While online advertised vacancies in most of these broad occupational
categories continue to run well below year ago levels, there are a few
exceptions. Art, design, entertainment, sports and media posted 98,200
advertised vacancies in June, exactly in line with the June 2008 level.
Healthcare support occupations at 97,800 were slightly above (600) last year's
level.

Supply/Demand rates indicated that, among the occupations with the largest
number of online advertised vacancies, there is a significant difference in
the number of unemployed seeking positions in these occupations. Among the top
ten occupations advertised online, there were more vacancies than unemployed
people seeking positions for healthcare practitioners (0.4) and computer and
mathematical science (0.4). On the other hand, in sales and related
occupations, there were about four people seeking jobs in this field for every
online advertised vacancy (4.3) and there were nearly five unemployed looking
for work in office and administrative support positions for every advertised
opening (4.7). For management positions, there were almost two people looking
for every advertised opening (1.6).

METRO AREA HIGHLIGHTS

49 of top 52 Metro areas post over-the-year declines in job demand in June.

Honolulu labor demand up 2,900 over last year's levels, Providence gains
1,200, and Virginia Beach gains 200.

In June, only 3 of the 52 metropolitan areas for which data are reported
separately posted over-the-year increases in the number of online advertised
vacancies. Honolulu, with 13,700 ads, was well above last year's level (27.4
percent). Providence, with 19,700, gained 1,200 advertised vacancies compared
to last year. Virginia Beach, with 21,300, gained 200. Among the three metro
areas with the largest numbers of advertised vacancies, the New York and the
Los Angeles metro areas were about 25 percent below June 2008 levels.
Washington, D.C. was down 14,300, or 8.8 percent, from last year's level.

The number of unemployed exceeded the number of advertised vacancies in all of
the 52 metro areas for which information is reported separately. Washington,
D.C. and Salt Lake City were the locations with the most favorable
supply/demand rates, where the number of unemployed looking for work was only
slightly larger than the number of advertised vacancies. On the other hand,
metro areas in which the respective number of unemployed is substantially
above the number of online advertised vacancies include Riverside, CA, where
there are nearly 10 unemployed people for every advertised vacancy (9.7),
Detroit (9.6), Portland (5.9), Sacramento (5.6), Chicago (5.4), Miami (5.3)
and Los Angeles (5.0). Supply/Demand rate data are for April 2009, the latest
month for which unemployment data for local areas are available.

Note: New Seasonal Factors for all Seasonally Adjusted Series
With the release of June 2009 data, new seasonal adjustment factors have been
applied to the national, regional, state and occupation time series. In
addition there was an adjustment to the May 2009 data as a result of a program
improvement.

With the release of May 2009 data, the occupational data are now seasonally
adjusted. Unemployment data are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current
Population Survey and are seasonally adjusted by The Conference Board in order
to provide comparable data to calculate Supply/Demand rates for occupations.
The Supply/Demand rate is the number of unemployed in the occupation divided
by the number of advertised vacancies in the occupation.

PROGRAM NOTES

The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series(TM) measures the number of
new, first-time online jobs and jobs reposted from the previous month on more
than 1,200 major Internet job boards and smaller job boards that serve niche
markets and smaller geographic areas.

Like The Conference Board's long-running Help-Wanted Advertising Index of
print ads (which was published for over 55 years and discontinued in July 2008
and continues to be available for research), the new online series is not a
direct measure of job vacancies. The level of ads in both print and online may
change for reasons not related to overall job demand.

With the October 1, 2008 release, HWOL began providing seasonally adjusted
data for the U.S., the 9 Census regions and 50 States. Seasonally adjusted
data for occupations is provided beginning with the June 1, 2009 release. This
data series, for which the earliest data is May 2005, continues to publish not
seasonally adjusted data for the 52 large metropolitan areas, but it is The
Conference Board's intent to provide seasonally adjusted data for large metro
areas in the future.

People using this data are urged to review the information on the database and
methodology available on The Conference Board website and contact the
economists listed at the top of this release with questions and comments.
Background information and technical notes on this new series are available
at: http://www.conference-board.org/economics/helpwantedOnline.cfm.

The underlying data for this series is provided by Wanted Technologies
Corporation. Additional information on the Bureau of Labor Statistics data
used in this release can be found on the BLS website, www.bls.gov.

The Conference Board
The Conference Board is a global, independent business-membership and research
association working in the public interest. Our mission is unique: To provide
the world's leading organizations with the practical knowledge they need to
improve their performance AND better serve society. The Conference Board is a
non-advocacy, not-for-profit entity holding 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt status in
the United States.

WANTED Technologies Corporation.
WANTED is a leading supplier of real-time sales and business intelligence
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proprietary On-Demand data mining, lead generation and CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) integrated technologies, WANTED aggregates real-time
data from thousands of online job boards, real estate and newspaper sites, as
well as corporate Web sites on a daily basis.

WANTED's data is used to optimize sales and to implement marketing strategies
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SOURCE The Conference Board

Frank Tortorici, +1-212-339-0231, Gad Levanon, +1-212-339-0317 or June Shelp,
+1-212-339-0369, all for The Conference Board