Online Job Numbers Signal Hiring Bounce for Some

The Conference Board reported this week that there were 3,294,800 online job postings in June on more than 1,200 major Internet job boards.

The postings between January and May signal an improvement from the decline of 1.2 million postings between August 2008 and January 2009.

"Job demand has definitely stabilized since January," said Gad Levanon, from 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."

Renee Fulton, from the staffing firm Talis Group, said employers these days are looking to hire — and to hire quickly.

She believes that companies needed the help long before now, but they had stopped job orders because of uncertainty in the economy.

As a result, business was slow from November to March.

But her outlook for the rest of 2009 is much more positive.

Recent activity, particularly the placement of engineers in the manufacturing sector, has picked up. Last month the number of job orders for her firm was level with the same time frame last year. She said June 2008 was a very strong month.