California outperforms U.S. in March online job ads

California outperformed most of the nation in online job postings in March, according to The Conference Board, the New York-based business research group.

Golden State employers posted 635,000 online ads last month, up 10,000, or 1.6 percent, from February. The March total was a 21.2 percent improvement over 524,000 job vacancy ads posted in March 2014.

Generally, the sectors with the highest demand for personnel were office and administrative support, computer science, middle management and health care.

Nationally, online advertised job vacancies edged up a tiny 15,200 to 5.46 million between February and March.

Sacramento employers posted 31,400 online ads in March, down 3 percent from 32,400 in February but a 23.1 percent gain from 25,500 in March 2014.

The board said California had 2.04 unemployed people per advertised job vacancy, higher than the national ratio of 1.6-to-1.

Gad Levanon, the board’s managing director of macroeconomic and labor market research, said in a statement that online ad growth in the first quarter nationwide “has been the strongest (year-over-year) quarterly growth in eight years.” The number of ads jumped 349,000 compared with the first quarter of 2014.

This story was originally published April 7, 2015 at 12:43 PM with the headline "California outperforms U.S. in March online job ads."