U.S. online job ads fell by 292,100 in March to a total of about 4.9 million, according to The Conference Board’s report on online jobs ads released today. The decrease follows a gain of 268,100 jobs in February.

“The March decline largely offsets the February gain and left the first quarter of 2014 with a minor drop of 50,000. It’s not the start of the year we were hoping for,” said June Shelp, vice president of The Conference Board. “The flat trend that we saw throughout last year seems to have continued into the first quarter of this year.”

Professional jobs like physicians and computer workers had three to five ads for every unemployed worker, making it hard for employers to find candidates to fill their advertised jobs. However, the situation is quite different for occupations like construction and production workers where there are anywhere from four to seven job seekers competing for every opening.