By: Strategy + Business — David Gross
In early January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported what economists regard as the most important monthly figure: the payroll jobs report. The U.S. economy added 292,000 jobs in December—an unambiguously excellent performance. The folllowing week, the BLS released another monthly indicator, one that is less widely followed but perhaps just as important: job openings. Why the country doesn’t pay more attention to this figure is a question that always causes me to scratch my head. On the second Tuesday of every month, the BLS releases the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). It’s a measure of dynamism and confidence; people quitting jobs at a higher rate is a good sign of confidence, and the number of openings provides a window into the mind-set of corporations. The news is superficially excellent. At the end of November 2015, there were 5.43 million jobs open in the U.S. That figure is up 11 %, or 545,000, from November 2014. It’s an impressive gain of 3.29 million, or 152 %, from the low of July 2009, the month the recession ended… All things being equal, we should expect the number of job openings to fall over time—or to at least hold steady. But the data suggests that the labor market—it’s a market, after all, where people are constantly bargaining for the right price—seems to have become less efficient since 2009.
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