American employers are the equivalent of a shopkeeper who has a “Help Wanted” sign permanently on display in his window, but never actually hires anybody. None of the applicants who come in offer the perfect mix of skills, experience and willingness to accept low pay that the shopkeeper is looking for.
That’s one way of reading some key measures of the labor market, updated Tuesday, that shed light on what afflicts the economy and where things will go from here.
According to the latest Labor Department data, employers had 4.8 million positions they were looking to fill in October. That’s up 25 percent in the last year and 125 percent since the start of the economic expansion in mid-2009.
But for all these vacancies, actual hiring isn’t in a similar boom. The number of people hired is up only 12 percent in the last year and 33 percent over the five-year expansion.
Dispatches From The Front 