The number of job openings continues to shrink and revisions tend to be negative.
The BLS released the Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for October on Wednesday. I am catching up today.
- At the March 2022 peak, there were 12,182,000 job openings vs an unemployment level of 5,993,000. There were nearly two openings per those unemployed.
- There are now 7,744,000 opening vs an unemployment level of 6,984,000. The unemployment level will soon top openings.
- Quits are voluntary separations. The number of quits is well below the pre-Covid level.
The number of openings is suspect. Many positions are fake or stale. Others exist only if the exact right person comes along.
In contrast, quits are relatively hard data (subject to BLS measurement), representing actions, not words. Quits are a measure of ability to find another job at better pay or benefits plus retirements.
Job Openings, Hires, Separations, Quits
Job Quits by Sector in Thousands
Job quits in Leisure and Hospitality, the overlapping Accommodation and Food Service sector, and Retail Trade have collapsed.
If you quit a job or are laid off, it’s not that easy to find another job.
Job Openings Per Unemployed Person
Openings per unemployed person is below the pre-pandemic level. And openings are likely overstated.
The 2024 Destruction of Small Business Employment in Pictures
In case you missed it, please see The 2024 Destruction of Small Business Employment in Pictures
Trends are especially ominous in businesses of 20-49 employees, down by 118,000 year-over-year.
Small businesses with employees 1-49 are struggling in 2024. Large businesses are booming (for now).
Reflections on BEA Revisions
If jobs are overstated, income is too. And on Wednesday we found out the BEA overstated wages by a massive $91.8 billion from $156.8 billion to $65.0 billion.
Please note the Huge Negative Revision of $91.8 billion to Second-Quarter Private Wages
The BEA commented “With the incorporation of these new QCEW data, real gross domestic income is now estimated to have increased 2.0 percent in the second quarter, a downward revision of 1.4 percentage points from the previously published 3.4 percent estimate.”
I commented “The BEA hugely revised GDI to the downside. Hmm. It seems that voters weren’t fooled.”
Click on the above link for more details and charts.
The unemployment number in post-Helene Asheville NC is around 8%. Many of those are in the tourist industry. Local officials fear those workers will move out and cause a shortage in the spring. My concern is how come local officials can’t image jobless tourist industry people grabbing a shovel or hammer to help rebuild?
Zero-cost communication has really screwed up the statistics for job openings. Before there was a cost when you posted a job opening in the papers or journals so you weighed the cost. Today it costs nothing to post a job opening so employers have no incentive not to post a job opening when there is no job open. I don’t see how this can be corrected so that statistic is meaningless. I am sure there are other meaningless statistics for the same reason.
I think the recession is being deferred but it won’t be denied. The big question is will Trump create a recession for the purposes of equalizing things between the MAGA folks (who are mostly long term unemployed because they wanted the same life their parents had) and everyone else.
What are you talking about?
Contrary to the MAGA folks, unemployment is not rampant. If people actually evolved, they wouldn’t be doing as badly as they are. Instead they choose not change and tell everyone else how terrible things are. If you want terrible, try the 2008/2009 recession. The MAGA folks have some vision of the country that Trump has fed them. The MAGA folks answer is bring everyone down rather than lifting themselves up. We are talking about 15% of the country here at worst. Trump won’t make things better. He will just bring everyone else down b/c this is what the 15% want.
Magats expect to be endlessly rewarded for being fat and dumb. Personal growth is fruity.
He’ll take the whole global economy down in flames.
Mostly half the country is long term unemployed? Hmmm.
These guys are mentally retarded trolls, just block them and move on. Allowing this kind of abuse of the comment section will eventually turn the site into Zerohedge, though.
They reliably drive advertising revenue though, and that’s why they’re sought.
I would like to find an artificial job. Maybe something in artificial intelligence. You would not have to think much because the machines would do it for you. So you would mostly do nothing at all. Wait a second, that sounds like a lot of jobs across the country in management.
Watch that graph dive when the tariffs kick in.
U.S. Economy Is Doing What Few Others Are: Getting More Productivehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-economy-is-doing-what-few-others-are-getting-more-productive/ar-AA1vkZjS
I have embarked on an anti-productive mission. The less I do, the less some rich prick makes, and the more people he has to hire.
That’s a great strategy, if you want to file for unemployment.
That would require management being able to determine who’s worthless and who’s not. I feel pretty safe, but you never know. Life is full of risks, and I can survive getting run off… was lookin’ for a job when I found this one.
While the fed continues to pour gasoline on the fire.
We are nowhere close to a recession. You are totally discounting the number of retirees whose jobs have to be backfilled.
“Retiree” would generally show up as a Quit in this data, and if the job needs to be backfilled that would also be reflected in Job Openings.
Neither is trending in the direction consistent with “jobs not getting backfilled”.
P.S. Even if you were right, and a retiree wave was causing low unemployment, so long as total workforce is declining, total output declining – that’s Still A Recession.
The Quits figure is likely inaccurate. About 2.5 million older Americans can be expected to retire each year. That implies that about 650 thousand Quits are people who separate from their job each year and take a different job. That seems much too low, does it not?
My bad. I conflated annual numbers and monthly numbers in my response. Somewhere beteen 200,000 and 300,000 older workers retire each month, on average. Those numbers jibe with Quit rates.
A lot of those folks have been useless for over a decade, and won’t need to be replaced.
Soylent Green … ?
part time work is the new retirement. Many have come back because they now know what scientists have long known — an idle mind leads to Alzheimer’s. We’ve had 4 people in their 60s and 70s come back after thinking they could retire permanently. After about a year, they all realized that if they stopped using their brain in new ways, their life became boring.
Not true. See the CDC data at thie link below, in the section titled “The percentage of full-time older workers has grown”
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/aging/data-research/index.html
The percentage of older part time workers is shrinking dramatically, not increasing.
I don’t buy this. People unretire because they are broke and can’t pay bills. I use my brain more in retirement than working given my natural curiosity. Most jobs are routine.
I’m holding out for movie star.
Tough luck. They only have openings for Mars astronauts.
Take this job and shove it