There were just two unemployed workers for every advertised job opening in September, the Department of Labor reported Thursday, slight improvement over the month before and a new post-recession low.
There were 4.7 million job vacancies in September, according to Thursday’s report, down slightly from August. But total openings have soared over the year, by roughly a quarter.
There were nearly seven unemployed workers for each position during the depths of the recession in 2009. The lowest the ratio fell before the financial crisis was roughly 1.5 in early 2007.
Statistics from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are considered lagging indicators, as they come out a month after the jobs report numbers.
Nevertheless, economists view them as helpful for understanding the underlying dynamics of the labor market. The details of Thursday’s report hinted at improving prospects for U.S. workers.
Hiring picked up in September, eclipsing 5 million for the first time since December 2007, the official start of the recession. While hiring has not improved at the same rate that job openings have, there was a nearly 300,000 spike in hires between August and September.
Although net job creation has picked up over 2014 and rising job vacancies point to further strength, hiring has been the missing ingredient in even faster growth in recent months. Layoffs, on the other hand, have continued to fall over the year. Thursday’s release of unemployment benefits claims from the Labor Department showed that layoffs have trended toward the lowest levels since the early 2000s in recent months.
The number of workers quitting their jobs, generally interpreted as a sign that workers have confidence in their personal labor market fortunes, also leaped up in September, by 240,000 to 2.75 million.
The hiring rate, as a share of all employment, rose from 3.4 percent to 3.6 percent, and the quits rate rose from 1.8 percent to 2 percent, near historical levels.
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen and other Fed officials have said that they watch hiring and quits for information about the health of the labor market beyond what is captured in the unemployment rate, which was at a post-recession low of 5.8 percent in October.
“For Fed Chair Yellen to be comfortable that the labor market has returned to a more normalized state, the hiring and quits rates each need to increase several tenths,” wrote Deutsche Bank economists Joseph LaVorgna and Brett Ryan in a note previewing Thursday’s data release.
The Fed has tied its plans for raising short-term interest rates above zero to developments in labor markets as well as the inflation rate. Thursday’s data will likely lend evidence to Fed officials’ stated belief that the jobs outlook is improving in line with their expectations.
