Online advertised vacancies increased 49,000 to 4,850,500 in January, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine Data Series. The December Supply/Demand rate stands at 1.57 unemployed for each advertised vacancy with a total of 2.7 million more unemployed workers than the number of advertised vacancies. The number of unemployed was approximately 7.5 million in December.

"In recent months, the trend in the number of online job ads has been flat to slightly rising," said Gad Levanon, Chief Economist, North America, at The Conference Board.

The Professional occupational category saw small losses in Management (-1.2) and Healthcare Practitioners (-1.4), and gains in Computer/Math (23.0) and Architecture/Engineering (6.1). The Services/Production occupational category saw losses in Sales (-7.6) and gains in Office/Admin (18.8) and Transportation (10.1).