The Bonddad Blog, July 6, 2009:
Perhaps the most interesting piece of work Rosie produced recently was an analysis of how many unemployed individuals we currently have for each job opening. Rosie looked at the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data from the BLS and the number of unemployed (also via the BLS).
Rosie refers to this as “The Truest Picture of Excess Labor Supply,” and it’s hard to argue with that description. The Household Survey reports about 14 million unemployed, and the JOLTS reports about 2.5 million current job openings. Scary stuff.
The Bonddad Blog, Sept. 11, 2009:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) puts out several reports. One of them – the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) – doesn’t get wide play. In that report, BLS reports on the number of job openings (among other things). If we combine that report with some information from the Current Population Survey (CPS) – specifically the number of unemployed Americans – we can see the following:
Unfortunately, the JOLTS series only goes back ten years, but the picture this paints of slack in the labor market is not a pretty one, with fully six Americans vying for every job opening.
NY Times, Sept. 27, 2009:
Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.
