There Are More Jobs Than People Out of Work, Something the American Economy Has Never Experienced Before (cnbc.com)

The jobs market has reached what should be some kind of inflection point: there are now more openings than there are workers. From a report: April marked the second month in a row this historic event has occurred, and the gap is growing. According to the monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released this week, there were just shy of 6.7 million open positions in April, the most recent month for which data are available. That represented an increase of 65,000 from March and is a record. The number of vacancies is pulling well ahead of the number the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts as unemployed. This year is the first time the level of the unemployed exceeded the jobs available since the BLS started tracking JOLTS numbers in 2000. As of April, the total workers looking and eligible for jobs fell to 6.35 million, a decrease from 6.58 million the previous month. The number fell further in May to 6.06 million, though there is no comparable JOLTS data for that month. Under normal circumstances, the mismatch would be creating a demand for higher wages. However, average hourly earnings rose just 2.7 percent annualized in May, up one-tenth of a point from April. Further reading: Why Nebraska has an amazing jobs market but nobody is moving there.

Comments

Ok

[Locke2005]

So why are headhunters still calling me up and trying to lowball me on software developer contracts? With H1B Visas getting shut down, they should be especially short on software engineers, shouldn't they?

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

And why are there (more than ever) unhoused people living in the streets which society has decided to take a giant dump on? Seattle which has a hot tech job market is befuddled with a growing number of unhoused jobless people living in tents on the sidewalks. Amazing.

Re:Ok

[Humbubba]

An A.C wrote

And why are there (more than ever) unhoused people living in the streets which society has decided to take a giant dump on? Seattle which has a hot tech job market is befuddled with a growing number of unhoused jobless people living in tents on the sidewalks. Amazing.

The unemployed usually go where the jobs are, ridiculously increasing the unemployment and homeless numbers for that particular area. Some come hoping to find a toehold to a career, others come for any sort of employment, even in the secondary job market. But even the qualified might not get hired for whatever reason (gender, race, HR rules and regulations, history, etc.) Not to mention, some homeless have jobs, but just can't afford Seattle's high rent.

It wouldn't surprise me if some of the homeless are anarchic Utopians wanting to create a practical social/economic/ecological alternative to 'authoritarian' representative democracy. Like Europe's Autonomism movement or France's Collectif la vieille Valette.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomism

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://laboratoireurbanismeinsurrectionnel.blogspot.com/2015/10/france-magnifique-vieille-valette.html&prev=search

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.passerelleco.info/article.php%3Fid_article%3D527&prev=search

Re:Ok

[jwhyche]

Sorry hoss, I'm not a baby boomer. But in a way your are correct, baby boomers are largely responsible for most if not all of this countries problems.

The only thing my generation has been is stuck with trying to clean up the mess boomers have left us.

Re:Ok

[elrous0]

Many companies, in Europe, use job offerings as a kind of "advertizement". In other words: there is no such job, no idea if that also happens in the US

Speaking as someone who recently had to look for work, I can assure you that this is very much the case in the U.S. as well. Very, very few advertised positions represent actual jobs. The vast majority of them fall into one of these categories:

1) Job recruiter bait (no actual job, just a fake ad for a job recruiter basically)
2) A job that they already have someone in mind for, but have to advertise for legal reasons
3) A job with the unstated hidden requirement "must be a woman or minority"
4) A continuous fake job ad that's just intended to solicit resumes to add to the pile
5) A job that is posted with ridiculous qualification requirements or a terrible salary, just so the company can claim they can't find anyone to fill it when they apply for an H1B hiring permit.

Uh no

[MikeRT]

There are anywhere from a few million to tens of millions depending on the accounting who just gave up on finding a new job and are not counted anymore.

Labor pool stats are just relative to what we call a proper labor distribution anyway. If 10m millennial women suddenly dropped out of the workforce over a decade to be stay at home wives**, they'd probably call them unemployed. When men who did jobs that were outsourced give up, they call them participants in a ghost economy we won't^H^H^H^H^Hcan't measure Because Reasons.

(**bwahaha you don't think corporate America welcomed a massive influx of women into the workplace out of "repentance for sexism," do you? They found religion on "equality" because adding tens of millions of working women to the economy crippled the ability of the men and lower class women to negotiate with them a la wages.)

Of course, it is a common tactic . . .

[sgt_doom]

for corporations doing poorly to advertise for nonexisting jobs. I recall back in the 1990s, when a local company called Traveling Software, kept advertising for positions after they had laid off over 60% of their workforce --- and surprise of surprises --- they never bothered to fill any of those advertised-for positions.

Sounds like bullshit

[Cornwallis]

Ignoring the U6 column on the labor statistics again?

I bet so. Howzabouts all the people - especially us 60+ - experiencing age discrimination who aren't even being counted any longer?

Re:Thanks Obama

[LynnwoodRooster]

Economy is in good shape and getting better. We're finally addressing the failures of NAFTA, killed the TPP, and getting China (and the EU, to a lesser extent) to have real talks about protectionism and free trade. Not to mention getting a little sit-down with North and South Korea. And pulling us out of insane agreements with Iran (who never signed in the first place) that exclude inspections of all military sites. Great jobs report. Positive trends among public opinion that we're on the right track. Actual progress on prison reform. Unleashed the dogs of war against ISIS and effectively ended them (via elimination of 99% of all ISIS-held territory).

But other than those, and many more, yeah - what's he ever done for us?

Re: Thanks Obama

[Mashiki]

You mean the guy who was trying to break into his own house, and when the cop asked him for ID. The guy became belligerent. Yes, very racist. It's not like police ask for ID all the time when they give the person the benefit of the doubt, to see if they were the person in question. And then Obama jumping into the entire thing, and flaming the "well maybe he was a racist." Nope, no race-baiting there. How about "his son trayvon" who had a long history of petty crime, and was well on his way to being yet another banger? Nope that wasn't race-baiting at all. Especially when the media got on board and called the guy who shot him white(because it fit the narrative). Remember, the progressives set the standard on what racism is on that. They attacked McCain, Bush, and several other people and used hispanic as race. You don't get to play one-off with this. Same rules for both sides hypocrite.

How about his race baiting statement in front of the UN with regards to Ferguson. He was a race baiting piece of shit, and no different then any other. The fact that you immediately jump to the "people who were his critics were the real race-baiters" simply shows that you, yourself have a serious racism issue.

Re:Thanks Obama

[Mashiki]

Tax cuts. This is what I consider his biggest achievement. Unfortunately it's only good if you are rich, for everyone else it's a shocker.

You mean it's good for everyone who doesn't live in a big city, or in specific coastal areas. Where the state was using tax-offsets via federal taxes to lower what they were actually charging people. Suddenly, when those places got to pay their fair share, their taxes went up. While everyone in flyover country as democrats like to say, went down.

Employment. I give him credit for maintaining Obama's hard work to turn around the sinking ship, however there are two caveats. Job growth is slightly less than it was under Obama, so even though it's good it's not as good, and it's a lot easier to maintain short term momentum when you're already headed in that direction.

Here's the problem. The regulations Obama put into place, hurt wages a lot. It discentivized employers to hire new people or increasing the rate of pay. With things like the ACA, forced mandates and so on, that further pushed employers to cut back, or even lay people off. Which is why when the regulations dropped off wages started spiking upwards(something they haven't done since ~2002). Remember Obama's words that low GDP growth was the new normal? Why did it spike just after Trump was elected. Why have we seen a double GDP rate(not real GDP), but flat GDP go up when regulations were removed. Especially when the GDP is now being revised upwards towards 4%. Don't confuse the two either. One is a measurement without inflation, the other with.