Employers may be having trouble filling open jobs

Employers may be having trouble filling open jobs
July 8, 2014, 2:20 PM ET
By Ruth Mantell @RuthMantell

Workers are becoming increasingly confident as companies post more job openings, but hiring has only slowly crept higher this year, signaling a weak spot in the labor market, economists said Tuesday.

There were 4.72 million hires in May, up 3% from the end of 2013, according to U.S. Labor Department data. But over that same time period, job openings rose 18% to 4.64 million at the end of May.

"There are simply more and more unfilled openings," Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities, wrote in a research note.

Over at the Economic Policy Institute, a left leaning think tank based in Washington, economist Heidi Shierholz wrote in a blog post that hiring needs to pick up for the labor market to experience a full recovery.

"Hiring is the side of that equation that, while generally improving, has not yet come close to a full recovery," Shierholz wrote.

Compared with when the recession began at the end of 2007, monthly hires are down 6%, while job openings are up 7%.

Source: http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2014/07/08/employers-may-be-having-trouble-filling-open-jobs/​