Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Job Openings Reach Three-Year High in September

The BLS reported today that total job openings in the U.S. reached a three-year high of 3,354,000 open positions at the end of September, the highest level of openings since August of 2008 (see chart).   Private-sector openings were just slightly below 3 million at the end of September, which was also the highest level since August 2008.  

In a related report that shows increased job availability, the Monster Employment Index for the U.S. increased by 11% in October compared to a year ago, "demonstrating improved overall online job availability compared to October 2010."

8 Comments:

At 11/08/2011 11:36 AM, Blogger morganovich said...

this metric has decoupled from actual job creation.

these "openings" seem to be nothing of the sort. either there is a huge skills mismatch, pervasive labor immobility, or these "openings" are not real and are just employers seeing who is out looking for a job.

this uptrend has not flowed through to actual hiring for ages now. sure, there is some lag, but not this much.

this chart says it all:

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/11/sluggish-growth-and-payroll-employment.html

it's going to be years at this rate before we get back to full employment in what has already been the slowest recovery since ww2.

(and note that this is u3, use u6 and this looks much worse.)

 
At 11/08/2011 11:43 AM, Blogger digitalpeterr said...

GLOOMBERG crew WON'T report this.

 
At 11/08/2011 11:52 AM, Blogger Buddy R Pacifico said...

From the BLS Survey report:

"The number of quits (not seasonally adjusted) in September 2011 increased from 12 months earlier for total nonfarm and total private and was essentially unchanged for government."

People are leaving jobs in the private sector at higher rates But not in government. Duh, government jobs and benefits are better than private (generally), so, why leave until retirement?

 
At 11/08/2011 1:21 PM, Blogger Benjamin Cole said...

Good news...just hope these trend can continue.

Buddy is right. Who would quit a US uniformed federal job when you can retire after 20 years with full retirement benefits (a million-dollar package) and unlimited medical care?

 
At 11/08/2011 3:05 PM, Blogger VangelV said...

these "openings" seem to be nothing of the sort. either there is a huge skills mismatch, pervasive labor immobility, or these "openings" are not real and are just employers seeing who is out looking for a job.

I have a lot of chats with mining companies every year. Most of them want to hire competent people at high salaries but can't get the employees that they need. Many machine shops, specialty manufacturers, oil services companies, etc., have exactly the same problems. At the same time as these jobs remain open there is a surplus of graduates in communications, general business, accounting, art history, administration, etc.

 
At 11/08/2011 3:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Though job openings are higher, the number of unemployed per job is still very high at 4.2 - more than 3x the 2007 figure.

On the plus side, what it suggests is that labor unit costs should remain constrained leading to high profit margins (see chart - measured here as output prices less unit labor costs), moderate inflation and higher business investment.

http://www.adsanalytics.com/dashboard/docs/dashboard.php?treepage=tree_definition_main.php&chart=chart_corp_pm3

ADS Analytics

 
At 11/10/2011 1:21 PM, Blogger sethstorm said...


these "openings" seem to be nothing of the sort. either there is a huge skills mismatch

Skills mismatches don't exist, only the unwillingness of an employer to train the people they have available.

 
At 11/11/2011 2:42 PM, Blogger VangelV said...

Skills mismatches don't exist, only the unwillingness of an employer to train the people they have available.

Nonsense. If I need a machinist now I don't have the time to train a new employee to become one only to lose him to a competitor later. The problem in the US is that many people do not have marketable skills. Who would have guessed that the BA in gender politics would not be very useful to employers.

 

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