Job Openings Over 6 Million

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One of the things I have noticed in this economic cycle is that as the number of people on social media talking about economics increases, so do the number of economic fallacies perpetrated by that media.

One of the most egregious economic lies I have heard in this cycle is that we have over 95,000,000 million people in the U.S. out or work  and looking for jobs. First, how can we have 95 million out of work when we never lost 95 million jobs in the past 7 recessions combined.  Even in the Great Recession,  the job loss was roughly 8.7 million.  Since then we have created well over 17,000,000 jobs.  You see how the numbers simply do not add up?

I love the JOLTS, job openings labor turnover survey, and a lot of my fellow nerdy economic friends will have to admit that they live for JOLTS too. Today we saw an epic print in the JOLTS that almost reached my prediction for  job openings to hit  6,210,000.  Jobs openings moved up in April to over 6,000,000.

Job openings increase to series high in April; hires decrease, separations edge down  


From Calculated Risk

JOLTSApr2017


Even using
the six month moving averages, you can see the gap between openings and hires.  Quits ( which is considered a positive) as a % have been basically flat for a year but you can see the big gap between quits vs layoffs & discharges below 

From Doug Short 
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/06/06/job-openings-labor-turnover-clues-to-the-business-cycle

JOLTS JUNE

Job openings differ from sector to sector. 

From Fred:  https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/32241

JOLT Sectors

Due to subpar demographics and labor force growth, I lowered my monthly job creation numbers years ago. Demographics are economics the rest is stamp collecting.

A Must follow on twitter: (  @ernietedeschi ) 
DEMOGRAPHICS 1900

While the U.S. will have replacement workers where other countries won’t, we still have to deal with the reality of lower population growth. 

DEMOGRAPHICS JOBS

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Our biggest labor force growth is ahead of us.  Our demographics today are still too young push up labor force growth. Our number of ages 21-27 is massive.

DEMOGRAPHICS TOTAL

The next time you hear that the US has 95 million, 20 million , 40 million  or some other crazy number of unemployed workers, remember this:

The U.S. has over 166,000,000 people working,  unemployment claims at multi decade lows, 80 months of job expansion (the longest on record),
and over 6,000,000 job openings.


The MMT crowd, Gold Bugs and  Anti Central Bank Crew have all failed you If you still want to listen to their economic theories ( and this is America so you have every right to do so) remember the math, facts and data that prove them wrong if they still push mass unemployed as an issue in America. 


For a Facebook live discussion on this topic:

Logan Mohtashami is a financial writer and blogger covering the U.S. economy with a specialization in the housing marketLogan Mohtashami is a senior loan officer at AMC Lending Group,  which has been providing mortgage services for California residents since 1987. Logan also tracks all economic data  daily on his own facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Logan.Mohtashami

2 thoughts

  1. all very good points. The one thing holding people back at least in my area (Boston) is the price of houses relative to income. Perhaps we will see more and more ancillary locations become attractive urban centers due to affordability

    1. Shelter cost is always an issue for certain job sectors in hot housing spots. I know here in Irvine, a lot apt building has and still going on

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