The Bureau of Labor Statistics released data from its March job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) yesterday. It got some attention because the job openings figure rose substantially, bringing the job opening rate to 4.3 percent, the highest since the survey was first fielded in December of 2000. This is somewhat higher than the 3.7 percent hire rate. Since the hiring rate had previously exceeded the job opening rate, as seen below, this was taken as fresh ammunition by the “hard to get good help” gang.
The argument they are making is that businesses have jobs open and want to hire, but they just can't find the people with the right skills. The problem with this story is that we see a sharp rise in the ratio of openings to hires everywhere, including industries like retail trade and restaurants, where we generally don't think of as requiring high skills.
In 2007, before the Great Recession, the job opening rate in retail was 2.6 percent. The hiring rate was 4.9 percent, a gap of 2.3 percentage points. In March, the job opening rate was 4.3 percent with a hiring rate of 4.4 percent, a gap of just 0.1 percentage point.
There is a similar story with the restaurant sector (actually accommodation and food service). In 2007, the job opening rate was 4.4 percent. The hire rate was 6.9 percent, for a gap of 2.5 percentage points. In the most recent data, the job opening rate was 5.4 percent, while the hiring rate was 6.1 percent, a gap of 0.7 percentage points.
Between 2007 and March of 2018, the gap between hiring rates and openings fell by 2.2 percentage points in retail and 1.8 percentage points in restaurants. This compares to an overall decline in the size of the gap of 1.1 percentage points (and a shift in direction). In short, the rise in job opening relative to hires was sharper in retail trade and restaurants than in the economy as a whole.
This doesn't fit well with the lack of qualified workers story unless the skills required to get a job in these sectors are much higher than is generally believed.
