Sunday, December 14, 2008

Job openings compared to number looking for work

Each month, the National Jobs for All Coalition publishes an expanded count of the unemployed, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data. This count includes people who want work, but are not included in the official count of the unemployed--part-time workers who want full-time work, along with those who want a job but had not looked for one because they didn't expect to find any, or weren't able to work for a variety of reasons, including lack of child care or transportation, or a disability. When these groups are added to those included in the official measure, the unemployment rate roughly doubles. When we compare this expanded number to reported job availability, we find that in November, for example, there were more than seven job wanters for each available job. [Incidentally, the efforts of NJFAC and its supporters were a major reason that Congress appropriated funds for the Dept. of Labor to collect job vacancy data.]

Following is a report on job vacancy statistics from the Economic Policy Institute.

Job openings rapidly dwindle as unemployment pushes upward
by Tobin Marcus

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the October Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data, which indicates that there were only 3.1 million job openings in the economy, down nearly 25% from the start of the recession in December 2007.

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While that's bad, what makes matters worse is that this rapid decline in job openings has been accompanied by a sharp increase in unemployment. In October 2008 the number of job seekers topped 10 million, more than three times the number of jobs available. The acceleration has been startling: the number of job seekers per opening has skyrocketed from 1.9 at the beginning of this recession to 3.3 less than a year later in October 2008. The rapid increase in this ratio clearly indicates the weakness of the current labor market and the difficulty that workers are having finding jobs. Unfortunately, this ratio will likely continue to worsen for the forseeable future, given that in November unemployment increased by another 250,000 jobs.

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