Job creation remains near-stagnant: New hires barely exceed job separations
Job hires (3.6 percent) only barely exceed total job separations (3.5 percent, including firings, resignations, and layoffs).
This chart examines employment since 2007, the year the recession began. Job openings (green area) and unemployment (U3, pink area) provide the background for the balancing act between job hires (red line) and job separations (blue line). When the red line is above the blue line, like now, we have net job creation (yellow area).
SoldAtTheTop / The Paper Economy
Looking deeper at today’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover report you can see that while the unemployment rate is showing notable initial signs of establishing a peak, the job openings rate is showing an equal but opposite troughing dynamic.
Further, the latest data indicates that job hires are occurring at a rate of 3.6% of total employment while total job separations occurs at a rate of 3.5%.
So, currently job hires are slightly outpacing separations thus resulting in, more or less, a stagnant job market and more evidence that the unemployment rate may stay elevated for some time.
It's important to note that today's data is very preliminary and volatile and that a more sustained and sustained spread between the rate of hires and separations would be required to make a significant dent in our current structurally weak job market.
Add/view comments on this post.
------------------------------
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.