Posted on 08/12/2010 10:34:18 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Just in case yesterdays Fed announcement and this mornings numbers on exports didnt stamp out the last flicker of hope for Recovery Summer, the latest on job prospects has the season looking much more like a winter of American discontent. For the second straight month, job openings at private-sector firms dropped in June, and thats bad news for the rest of Recovery Summer Bummer:
Company job openings fell for the second straight month in June, a sign that hiring isnt likely to pick up in the coming months.
The data comes after a weak employment report Friday that showed businesses arent adding enough new workers to bring down the unemployment rate, currently 9.5 percent.
Wednesdays report, known as the Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, or JOLTS, suggests that wont change anytime soon.
Why wont it change any time soon? The JOLT survey counts announced job openings at private-sector companies at the end of each month, not actual hires. It usually takes at least a month or so to fill most openings; as the AP explains, the average length of time to fill an announced slot is around three months. Therefore, the JOLT survey is seen as a near- to mid-term harbinger of future hiring and two straight months of declines sends a clear signal that joblessness wont be declining.
The number of job openings in the JOLT survey was 2.54 million, which is an improvement of 26% from a year ago when employment plummeted in the US and hadnt hit bottom yet. At its peak, in 2007, job openings in the private sector hit 4.4 million while the economy chugged along at around a 5% unemployment rate. The overall number actually didnt change in June, though, thanks to a slew of government openings that brought the total number to 2.9 million which means that a decreasing number of private-sector workers will have to pay for an increasing number of public-sector workers.
The data suggests that we wont see substantial private-sector expansion for at least another three months, and probably longer than that, with exports and manufacturing dropping in May and June. Recovery Summer may stretch all the way into winter which really will become a season of massive discontent.
Ummmm. If there actually were a recovery going on no one would have to mention it. It’s not exactly hard to miss.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.