The shrinking online job market appears to have stabilized at a total of about 3.23 million advertised job openings a month, according to a report released Monday by the Conference Board.

That is a different story from the situation two years ago when, for instance, advertized vacancies for online jobs were 4.27 million in September of 2007. The market dropped precipitously in December of 2008 and January of 2009 and the number of advertised positions has continued to average about 1.2 million below 2008's monthly average of 4.5 million.

"Online job demand has held relatively steady at around 3.3 million advertised vacancies per month for the last six months," said Gad Levanon, senior economist at the Conference Board, in a statement. "While we are not seeing declines, the sluggish nature of labor demand is another indication that the path to recovery is likely to remain a long haul."

On the national scene, there are more than four unemployed persons looking for work for every online advertised vacancy, the Conference Board said.

The brightest spot in a generally grim picture are occupations in sales and related occupations, which recorded 375,000 vacancy ads in July. The figure represented an increase of 11,700 vacancies and was followed by 9,400 management openings.

Levanon said, "Based on the number of unemployed relative to the number of advertised vacancies, workers looking for jobs in the management field will find it somewhat easier than those looking for sales positions."

Other strong categories include healthcare practitioners and the broad category of arts, design, entertainment, sports and media.

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