Employers Hire 4 Million in July: 1.5 Million More Jobs Than Job Openings – Huh?

by Duncan Mathison

This Sunday the New York Times reported that there were only 2.4 million job openings in July for the 14.5 million unemployed.  This means there is a 6-1 ratio of job seekers to jobs – the worst ratio since the U.S. Government began tracking the data in 2000. To get this number, the Bureau of Labor Statistics asks employers to report how many open positions they have that they are actively recruiting for and, if they had a qualified candidate, could start in the next 30 days.  This is grim news.

But get this: In June, employers told the government that they had 2.5 million openings for July but they actually ended up hiring more than 4 million.  These are full time “permanent” positions. For part time temporary positions as well as contract work, the numbers are even higher.

So what’s going on?

The truth is, employers always hire more people than they actively recruit.  Not only that, the openings/hire gap is typically bigger when the economy is slow as compared to when the economy is strong.  This gap between posted openings and actual hires represents a portion of the “hidden job market” – positions filled without ever being formally posted or advertised.

If you are a job seeker, this means if you rely solely on posted openings, you are missing a big part of the actual job opportunities out there.  To land a job in this market, today’s job seeker has to be better at finding unpublished job opportunities.  I talked about this before and it is worth repeating:  The  1-2-3 of a typical job search is too limiting.   Today, the job search takes a different, more proactive, approach than when times are good.  Make sure your search targets both the hidden job market as well as the published jobs. Each opportunity uncovered in the hidden marketplace is an opportunity with less competition and usually is a better job.

Tags: job search, News Reports, On-Line Jobs, unemployment, Unlock the Hidden Job Market

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.