The state's Employment Development Department (EDD) posts on its website data concerning online help wanted ads, comparing them to trends in the labor market both statewide and in several regions of the state. As EDD notes, the "Help Wanted OnLine™ Data Series (HWOL) provides timely monthly measures of labor demand (advertised vacancies) at the national, regional, state, and metropolitan area levels." EDD adds, "These monthly measures are comparable in timing and geographic detail to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) monthly measures of labor supply (unemployment)."
In the March 2015 help wanted report, EDD notes that all California regions tracked "saw an increase in year-over job advertisements from March 2014 to March 2015," as illustrated below.
"Supply/Demand Rate." The EDD report calculates a supply/demand (S/D) rate by region, considering the number of unemployed (a measure supply of available workers) versus the number of help-wanted online ads (a measure of demand for workers). Using February 2015 data, the national seasonally-adjusted supply/demand rate was reported to be 1.60, versus a seasonally-adjusted rate for all of California at 2.04. "The different regions within California vary in their supply/demand rate with all regions above the national level except for the Bay Area," the March report notes. The EDD figure below breaks California's supply/demand rate into six regions. The San Joaquin Valley has the highest supply/demand rate among California's regions tracked with roughly five unemployed people for every advertised vacancy, EDD found.
California showed year-over-year improvement from February 2014 to February 2015 with all regions experiencing a "proportional increase in advertisements," with "fewer unemployed individuals for every online advertised vacancy for February 2014 than there were for February 2015," as shown below.
Regional Information. The EDD website contains information on job ads in the state's metropolitan areas. This information shows the variety of employment opportunities across the state. In March, for example, the occupation with the most job ads in the San Jose and San Diego areas was software/application developer, while the most common ad in Los Angeles County or Fresno was for a registered nurse.