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Job JOLTS – There 3.5 People Looking for a Job for each Position Available in August 2012

Friday, October 19, 2012 12:01

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(Before It's News)

The BLS JOLTS report, or Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey describes the pathetic job market. Once again, little has changed, the never ending drum beat and mantra of our dead in the water labor market never ceases. The August 2012 statistics show there were 3.52 official unemployed persons for every position available^*. There were 3.561 million job openings for August, a -0.9% decrease from the previous month of 3,593,000. Openings are still way below pre-recession levels of 4.7 million. Job openings have increased 63% from their August 2009 Mariana Trench trough, yet real hiring is a distant memory. There were 1.8 persons per job opening at the start of the recession, December 2007. The job market is horrific and worse than last month. Below is the graph of official unemployed, 12.088 million, per job opening.

job openings per official unemployed August 2012

Job openings are all types of jobs, temporary, part-time, seasonal and full-time. Hires are U.S. citizens, permanent residents, illegals and foreign guest workers.

If one takes the official broader definition of unemployment, or U-6, the ratio becomes 6.5^** unemployed people per each job opening. The August U-6 unemployment rate was 14.7%. Below is the graph of number of unemployed, using the broader U-6 unemployment definition, per job opening.

u6 jolts job openings per alternative unemployment rate August 2012

We have no idea the quality of these job openings as a whole, as reported by JOLTS, or the ratio of part-time openings to full-time.

The rates below mean the number of openings, hires, fires percentage of the total employment. Openings are added to the total employment for it’s ratio. Openings rate dropped a 10th of a percentage point from the previous month, the hires rate, which is what is important here, ticked up a 10th of a percentage point. Separations increased 0.3 percentage points from July and even worse news, that’s because fires and layoffs increased by 0.2 percentage points. The job market is stagnant and a dead pool.