Businesses are advertising new jobs faster than they can find workers to hire.
The number of job openings held steady in July at just under 4.7 million, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday morning.
Although the number fell short of Wall Street economists’ expectations, job openings have spiked in 2014, as counted in the the agency’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Over the past year, listings are up nearly 25 percent, and have returned to pre-recession levels.
But hiring to fill those positions has lagged. The total number of hires for July, 4.9 million, was up 81,000. Total monthly hires are roughly half a million lower than the pre-financial crisis norm.
The slow pace of hiring was reflected in the BLS jobs report — the widely cited and more timely report released by the agency on the first Friday of every month. Monthly payroll job gains have slowed over the course of the summer.
Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that net job growth had slowed to 142,000 jobs in August from 212,000 in July and 267,000 in June. Congressional Republicans used the slow job growth to criticize the Obama administration for failing to engineer a faster economic recovery five years after the official end of the recession.
Yet gross job creation, as gauged by the JOLTS data on openings, has accelerated throughout the summer. A wide range of other economic indicators, such as manufacturing data and consumer confidence, continue to signal that underlying economic growth is stronger than the monthly payroll jobs report indicates.
