U.S. job openings rose 7.6 percent in Jan. to 2.7 million
Published: March 10, 2010
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Job openings rose sharply earlier this year, evidence that employers are slowly ramping up hiring as the economy improves.
The number of openings in January rose about 7.6 percent, to 2.7 million, compared with December, the Labor Department said. That's the highest total since February 2009.
The report is a sign that the economy is soon likely to generate consistent job gains. Some economists expect employers to add up to a net 300,000 jobs in March, though as many as a third of them could be temporary hiring for the 2010 Census.
Hiring is critical to sustaining the economic recovery because job growth boosts incomes and helps restore the confidence needed to drive consumer spending. A gradual increase in net hiring would help prevent the recovery from fizzling.
There are now about 5.5 unemployed people, on average, competing for each opening. That's far more than the 1.7 people who were competing for each opening when the recession began. But it's down from just over 6 people per opening in December 2009.
Economists were encouraged by the report but cautioned that hiring likely will increase slowly this year.
"It's getting better, though not as quickly as you'd like," said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak.
The economy has lost 8.4 million jobs since the recession began, the largest drop since the 1930s. The jobless rate was unchanged last month at 9.7 percent. Most economists expect the rate to remain elevated for several years.
The Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey illustrates the heavy job turnover that occurs even in a sluggish economy. Employers hired about 4.08 million people in January, the report said. At the same time, 4.12 million people were fired or otherwise left their jobs.
Questions that occurred to me while reading this artilce:
Will the job market improve by the time we have graduated? I've always subscribed to the liberal arts philosophy of education rather than career training, but I wonder if I should be worried... Is Obama doing anything about this? Me thinks I heard tell of him sort of subsidizing the hiring of employees to encourage businesses to hire, but will this really create secure jobs? Look at the job turnover rate in the last paragraph; that is ridiculous! Why on Earth are we shifting so many people in and out of employment? The only things I can think is that companies are firing their high-up workers that have to be paid a lot and hiring noobies that will accept lower pay. I have no idea if this is true, but if I were corporate jerk I would do this. This is not to say all corporate level people are jerks. The point is, I'm not sure how much we can synthetically speed up the process of job creation through the private sector. What do you think?
I'd be interested to see which sectors of the economy have such high turnover. It's probably in the unskilled area, because elsewhere in the economy, the resources that need to be devoted to training new employees should tend to counteract the benefits of hiring new, cheaper workers. This is certainly the case at the company my dad works for, EMAHART, which is an auto supplier.
ReplyDeleteI think it will be a long while before the job market recovers. Certainly not by the time we graduate. Call me pessimistic, but from what I've seen of the national debt and firms' response to it, I don't have high hopes that there actually will be consistent job gains. If firms are going to try to be as "efficient" as possible, they will do things like eliminate workers with seniority (and better pay) and go for new recruits, as well as be cautious about hiring any extra workers.
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