By: Jennifer Saba The Conference Board reported Thursday that its help-wanted index dropped one point for the month of April to 38. The index for March was 39. For the same period last year, the index stood at 37.
"I would call this more of a drift than a drop," said Ken Goldstein, an economist with the Conference Board. "And it could be only a short-term drift. I would be really surprised if it didn't pop up again."
Goldstein points to the strong GDP, which rose above 4% for Q1. It's expected that the GDP will continue to hold its ground in the next few quarters. However, it's also unlikely that half a million jobs will be added by summer's end. "We had a couple of good months. We might take a month off or maybe slow down to 75,000 jobs and then hit a range of 125,000 to 150,000 jobs," Goldstein predicts. But he's quick to point out that jobless recovery is thing of the past. "That's gone, and it's not coming back."
Goldstein said that it would probably take around 175,000 new jobs per month to sustain the growth, which takes into account new graduates and discouraged workers looking for employment.
Five of the nine U.S. regions measured experienced job growth in the last three months. The largest increases occurred in the Mountain (12.6%) and South Atlantic (11.1%) regions.
The Conference Board measures its help-wanted index by looking at advertising volume in 51 major newspapers across the country every month. There has been some criticism that the index does not take into consideration a newspaper's online recruitment site. "The question with online [help-wanted ads] is how much of that is just a transfer [from print] and how much of that is real growth." Goldstein said. "I don't think we're seeing dramatic differences between online and print."
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