AUGUSTA — The Department of Labor’s Center for Workforce Research and Information has posted its first in a series of blogs that will analyze and discuss the findings of its 2014 Job Vacancy Survey.

The survey was sent to 3,400 Maine businesses seeking feedback about hard-to-fill jobs. Seventy percent of those surveyed responded. Of nearly 2,400 responses, 755 (31 percent) indicated they had one or more job openings.

The survey asked employers whether they had job openings for which they were actively recruiting in the month of September and, if so, to briefly describe open positions and identify whether the positions are difficult to fill.

The sample was designed to develop findings by region; in classifications by employer size—  small firms with employment of 2 to 19, mid-sized firms (20 to 99) and large firms (100 or more); and by industry (16 sectors).

The results of the survey will be analyzed in a series of blogs and then released in a final report. Upcoming blogs will examine characteristics of job vacancies in greater detail with the next topic focusing on job vacancies by industry.