In November there were 4,072,600 online advertised vacancies, a decrease of 89,100 (2.1 percent) from October, according to The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series (HWOL), reports MarketingCharts.

Nationally, online advertised vacancies were up 9.7 percent from Nov. '06 to Nov. '07.

There were 2.65 advertised vacancies online for every 100 persons in the labor force in November.

"The growth in the number of online ads has slowed in the last two months, and while year over year growth is still positive the pace has definitely slowed," said Gad Levanon, economist at The Conference Board. "In addition to trimming their hiring intentions, in recent months businesses have also been pulling back on investments in capital goods."

"[W]e are not likely to see any significant boost in employment through the early months of 2008," he added.

The National and Regional Picture

In November, 2,808,300 of the 4,072,600 unduplicated online advertised vacancies were new ads that did not appear in October, while the remainders are reposted ads from the previous month. The 2.1 percent decrease in total ads was caused primarily by a 2.3 percent decrease in new ads.

Despite those declines, Nov. '06 to Nov. '07 total ads and new ads rose 9.7 percent and 17.2 percent, respectively.

The national decline in advertised vacancies between October and November reflected a lower volume of ads in seven of the nine Census regions. Most regions saw a slight decline from last month but remained positive from last year's time.

Nov. '06 to Nov. '07, seven of the nine regions continued to show a gain in labor demand. Two exceptions to this were again New England and the Pacific region.

"New England and the Pacific are also among the weakest regions according to The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index," Levanon said.

MarketingCharts provides more details and several tables highlighting data by state, occupation and metropolitan area.