March job openings were the highest in almost four years

[jpak]

Source: USA Today

WASHINGTON – U.S. companies in March posted the highest number of job openings in nearly four years, a sign that hiring could strengthen after slowing this spring.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that employers advertised 3.74 million job openings in March. That's up from a revised 3.57 million in February. The March figure was the highest since July 2008, just before the financial crisis erupted.

The increase in job openings suggests that weaker hiring gains in March and April could be temporary. It usually takes one to three months for employers to fill openings.

Even with the increase, roughly 12.7 million people were unemployed in March. That means an average of 3.4 people competed for each open job. While that's far better than the nearly 7-to-1 ratio when the recession ended, in a healthy job market, the ratio is around 2 to 1.

<more>

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2012-05-08/march-job-openings-report/54832226/1

[libinnyandia]

1. Romney must be responsible:o)

[progressoid]

2. It's trickling down baby!

[tridim]

3. That's when I got my job..

After being UE'ed for two years.

It's also when the IT recruiters started calling and emailing like crazy.

[jtuck004]

4. Not enough. Need more government investment in the people and country, less focus on

propping up assets of the wealthy. Such as government programs which increase student loan payments to banks.

Senator Sherrod Brown, after campaigning with Obama over the weekend, went on tv yesterday and said our efforts have not been enough, need more investment in the country. (Politics Nation). I agree. A lot more.

Thank you for posting this even if it is kind of a puff piece. There is much more pressure on those 3.7 million jobs than the article would lead us to believe.

There are 12.7 unemployed, but the BLS report shows another 7.8 million working part-time who want or need full-time work, another 2.3 million who want work but have not looked in the past 4 weeks (as if it was pointless). There are 88 million in the category "Not in the labor force". Data from the BLS tells us that perhaps 35 million people from that pool will move back into the job market after the end of this Depression.

So my "Real-Feel" - like the Weather Channel <G> - number is more like 15, as in the number of people who also want any job that you might apply for. In other words, if those 3.7 million jobs all got filled today, there would still be 54 million of our neighbors waiting for...

In the meantime the foks at the big investment banks that perpetutated this financial crisis look relatively comfortable.

November is a long way away, and things will change. I wonder how many and which way people will vote.