Jobseekers vs. openings still out of whack

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics this week released its latest JOLTS data (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey), and as always the Economic Policy Institute was ready with its own analysis (and graph, above).

According to the BLS, the ratio of unemployed persons to available jobs was 5-to-1 in September, slightly weaker than in August (4.8-to-1), but better than the ratio seen when the recession ended in June 2009 (5.8-to-1). Since July 2009, though, the number of job openings has increased 25 percent, says the BLS, to 2.9 million in September.

But hiring levels have remained anemic. (JOLTS, released monthly, looks at job openings, hires and separations -- quits and involuntary -- on the last business day of each month.) According to the BLS, September saw 4.2 million hires, up 9 percent since the recession ended but below the level of 5.0 million hires when the recession began in December 2007.

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, says the latest JOLTS report shows the same "stalling out" in the economy that has characterized other labor market data since earlier this year.

Then the EPI adds this twist: "if we were to include not just the 14.8 million unemployed workers, but also the 9.5 million 'involuntarily part-time' workers -- part-time workers who want and are available for a full-time job, and are therefore likely job searching -- the ratio would be 8.3-to-1."

Criminy!

EPI also uses the JOLTS release to draw attention to the planned Nov. 30 expiration of long-term unemployment benefits, and calls on Congress to extend them through 2011.

'Bright side' to unemployment? Are you kidding?

Ticker from the Economic Policy Institute shows
the number of workers (as of July 3) who have
lost unemployment benefits due to inaction in Congress.

Two thumbs up to Andrew Leonard for his tongue-in-cheek "The bright side of mass unemployment" in Salon, where he rips a couple of positive takes on the country's current 9.5 percent jobless rate:

• That "Companies are getting higher-productivity employees for the same or lower wage rate they were paying a marginal employee."
• That "there has been better cost containment in the U.S. than in some of our competitors" because pressure for higher wages is nonexistent, aiding multinational companies.

I'll take a big "Thank You!" then from Corporate America for doing my part, as I sit here on the eve of my one-year anniversary of being unemployed. (Actually, I'd prefer a job offer instead. You can contact me here.)

The June unemployment report from the government, released last week, shows a continuing record-high number of U.S. workers has been jobless for six months or more -- 6.75 million workers, or 45.5 percent of the total unemployed. (Leonard's article, by the way, quotes a story that parses the duration of unemployment even more finely -- to the number of workers jobless for one year or more. I haven't been able to find data like that for 2010 through the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, although the agency has produced such stats for 2008 and 2009 -- when unemployment was just ramping up.)

The Economic Policy Institute, which follows the unemployment data closely, pointed out that even though the June jobless rate ticked down a bit from 9.7 percent the month before, the labor force contained about 652,000 fewer workers.

"[L]abor force participation is an entire percentage point lower now than it was a year ago," EPI economist Heidi Shierholz wrote. "This points to another ongoing issue in the labor market: the backlog of 'missing workers,' that is, workers who dropped out of (or never entered) the labor force during the downturn."

She calculates the number of missing workers at 3.6 million since the start of the Great Recession, and notes they aren't reflected in any jobless numbers. "As these workers enter or re-enter the labor force in search of work, this will contribute to keeping the unemployment rate high," she says.

Meantime, as EPI now tracks on its homepage, more than 1.7 million unemployed workers have lost jobless benefits since the beginning of June because Congress hasn't approved their extension. The National Employment Law Project, an advocate for low-wage workers, says that's unprecedented: "Never before has Congress cut off benefits when unemployment was so high."

And it also points to another statistic that ought to lower the wattage in the bright-side-to-unemployment camp: that every $1 in unemployment benefits generates $1.60 in economic growth, according to Moody's Economy.com.

Of course, those of us who are unemployed would rather be spending money from our full-time jobs than from a pot we share with 15 million other jobless workers.

UPDATE: Congress finally passed and the president signed legislation that extend unemployment benefits for another six months for those who had been cut off.

Got a job? Keep it, so I can get one too

Economic Policy Institute chart shows ratio of workers per available job

Here's an unreasonable request: If you've got a job, stay in it awhile so you're not competing with me for any available openings.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics today released its monthly JOLTS report, which shows some improvement in the number of workers vying for each job that is available. According to the Economic Policy Institute, which tracks JOLTS, the February ratio of unemployed workers to available job was 5.5 to 1, an improvement from the high in November of 6.2 job-seekers per opening.

JOLTS -- formally the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey -- lags the unemployment report by a month. So while on Friday the government said the U.S. employment picture brightened in March, up 162,000 jobs in nonfarm payroll, that wasn't the case in February. Then, the country still was losing jobs: down 14,000 for the month in a revised count.

Although the JOLTS numbers show that so-called separations -- layoff, firing, quitting and retirement -- are down from a year earlier, hiring has remained flat, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Says EPI: "The good news is that layoffs are down to where they were before the recession (started), and hiring is no longer declining. The bad news is that hiring is nowhere near the levels required to put this country’s 15 million jobless workers back to work."

Indeed, while the government reported the economy was adding jobs in March, it also said the so-called U-6 rate -- the measure of labor underutilization -- was up for the month: more people were taking part-time work who preferred full-time jobs, and the number of workers "marginally attached" (want a job but not actively looking) and "discouraged" (have given up looking) also rose.

Meantime, the government said Friday, the number of long-term unemployed workers -- jobless for six months or more -- rose by 414,000 in March to 6.5 million, or 44.1 percent of those without jobs.

So now you know the genesis of my plea for the employed to avoid job-hopping for the time being.

Sure, some of the jobs posted as available might look enticing, but don't you think those of us "involuntarily separated" from our previous jobs -- laid off -- might want first dibs?

After all, the March unemployment report showed that the industry category that includes newspapers (information/publishing industries except Internet) continues to lose jobs -- down 59,000 from a year ago and 2,100 just from February. (Here's the government's chart on nonfarm payroll by industry sector for March.)

Yes, I understand that a job opening will still exist if a worker at Company A applies for and lands a job advertised at Company B. But here's the thing: While I may be ideal for the Company B job, I might not be as neat a fit for the one at Company A.

Case in point: Several months ago, I applied for a job as a business columnist and blogger at a newspaper in Florida; more recently, I did the same for a job as business editor in Washington, D.C. In each case, I fit the job description to a T. (While I wasn't a local candidate, in neither case was that a job requirement.)

The first job went to a non-journalist (a banker); the second to someone who edited at a politics-focused niche paper. So while I was 110 percent qualified for the advertised jobs, I couldn't claim that for the posts the job-hoppers left -- especially the commercial lender.

The lesson here? It's already a tough job market without the gainfully employed entering the fray as competitors too. So, please, if you've got a job, hands off the newly available ones.

When will the aftershocks end?

Every day seems to bring a new jolt:

• Some big bylines are included among the 74 newsroom workers who opt to take a buyout at the New York Times -- and on the Metro Desk alone that adds up to more than 80 years of experience.
• Nielsen Co. decides to close the venerable Editor & Publisher -- long a news and jobs bible for journalists -- as it sells off a handful of trade publications.
• The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland, which has offered free, multi-day training for journalists for more than two decades, will be shuttered at month's end. (Disclosure: I've been a "fellow" there twice.) The website BusinessJournalism.org said grants from long-time funder the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation were not renewed. 

It feels as if the earthquake that has shaken the newspaper industry continues to send out powerful aftershocks. Just as you thought you'd regained your footing, another tremor comes through.

And it likely won't get better, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Labor.

The agency's Occupational Outlook Handbook 2008-09 Edition offers this pdf update on job projections in the category "news analysts, reporters and correspondents": whereas employment by newspaper publishers stood at about 33,000 in 2008, jobs likely will fall to 25,500 by 2018, down 22.72 percent.

Earlier, the projection was for growth in this jobs category of about 2 percent between 2006 and 2016.

I wonder how much worse the 2009-to-2019 outlook may be.