Candidates and elected officials regularly tout their focus on “Jobs, jobs, jobs,” but none have succeeded in producing a jobs creation environment like America has today. With business and consumer confidence sky-high, employers are ready to hire. The only problem they’re having is that unemployment is so low, they can’t find workers to fill the jobs. That dynamic has created the highest number of job openings on record. The number of openings minus the number of unemployed Americans leaves 902,000 more jobs than people to fill them.
The Wall Street Journal reports that job openings have topped 7 million for the first time:
American employers had more than seven million unfilled jobs for the first time on record this summer, reflecting a historically tight labor market that is causing some businesses to struggle to find workers.
There were a seasonally adjusted 7.136 million job openings on the last business day of August, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That extends further into record-high territory for data dating back to 2000.
Available jobs in August outnumbered jobless Americans actively looking for work by 902,000, the largest such gap on record. Prior to March, job openings had never exceeded unemployed workers in more than 17 years of monthly records.
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