About the Data

Help Wanted OnLine ™ (HWOL) from The Conference Board is a measure of real-time labor demand captured through online job ads. The Conference Board compiles online job ads from over 50,000 sources and publishes the data in an online application that covers national, state, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and county levels, detailed by occupation, industry and employer. Online jobs ads are an additional measure of labor demand. Reports of hiring demand by area, industry, occupation, and employer are a valuable tool for identifying employment opportunities and helping with the reemployment of Florida’s out-of-work citizens. The FloridaCommerce, Bureau of Workforce Statistics and Economic Research compiles and publishes reports every month from Help Wanted OnLine that show hiring demand at both the state level and the regional workforce board level. 

The HWOL program uses data collected from over 28,000 online job sources including traditional job boards, corporate boards, and social media sites. Internet job sources that are aggregators (i.e. only scrape ads from other sources and provide no unique ads) are identified and removed from active collection in order to eliminate a major source of duplication in counting online ads. New job sources are identified using independent research and recommendations from industry sources across the U.S. This process results in periodic updates to the HWOL coverage. Job sources that cover smaller niche markets are also included in HWOL; however, smaller local job sources in an area with a limited number of ads may not be targeted for collection.

The HWOL program uses the Federal Government’s Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) Manual to assign an occupational code to each ad. Occupational coding is done at the 6-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) level and the 8-digit O*Net level using autocoder software selected by The Conference Board for its accuracy. The Conference Board periodically updates the O*Net classification of HWOL data and reclassifies the entire HWOL database of ads with each new Federal Government revision to the SOC manual. All data are reported in mid-monthly timeframes (from the 14th of the previous month to the 13th of the current month) except for historical timeseries data (which are reported in standard monthly timeframes).