Online advertised vacancies decreased 276,800 to 5,407,700 in December, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine Data Series, released today. The November Supply/Demand rate stands at 1.40 unemployed for each advertised vacancy with a total of 2.3 million more unemployed workers than the number of advertised vacancies. The number of unemployed was around 7.9 million in November.

"Labor demand in 2015 continued at the same slow steady pace of 2014, averaging about a 24,000 monthly increase," said Gad Levanon, Managing Director of Macroeconomic and Labor Market Research at The Conference Board. "While labor demand growth has been somewhat slow over the past two years, the monthly employer demand levels have remained consistently high, providing a strong basis for a healthy labor market."

In 2015, the Professional category saw an over-the-year increase of 4.2 percent. Much of the gain came from the Healthcare category with small gains in most of the other areas. The Services/Production category saw a stronger over-the-year increase at 7.2 percent. Much of this gain came from the Transportation category and the Food category with additional gains in the Sales, Healthcare Support and Office/Administration categories.