The number of online job ads rose by 255,000 in December to more than 3.6 million, according to The Conference Board's measure of online help-wanted ads released today.

Job growth has been mildly positive since the low point in April 2009, according to The Conference Board.

"Employers' modest increase in demand for labor in the second half of 2009 is a nice way to end what has been a very challenging year," said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. "The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is still very high, but the recent six months indicate that things are slowly moving in the right direction. The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is about 12 million, with 4.5 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy."