Online advertised vacancies were down 257,900 in October to 4,926,800, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine (HWOL) Data Series released today. The September Supply/Demand rate stands at 2.2 unemployed for each vacancy, with a total of 6.1 million more unemployed workers than the number of advertised vacancies.

"Slow overall economic growth has left labor demand flat in the first 10 months of 2013," said June Shelp, Vice President of The Conference Board. "Even though the labor demand level still hovers around 5 million/month, the October loss leaves the 2013 year-to-date basically flat. This continues the trend we've seen this year with gains in one month being offset by declines the next month."

Since October 2012, the most striking pattern is that most Professional occupations have seen losses while Production/Service jobs have continued with modest gains. Over the year, higher-wage Professional occupations like Computer &Math jobs (-32,000) and Healthcare professionals (-29,000) lost job demand, while lower-wage Production/Service jobs like Transportation (+54,000), Sales (+36,000), and Food service (+33,000) have posted gains.