MacroScope

The number of jobs waiting to be filled fell in August for the first time in four months, underscoring the pain in the labor market where millions of unemployed workers have been shut out of the economic recovery. There were only 3.06 million available jobs at the end of August, down from July’s downwardly revised 3.21 million, according to the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) released on Wednesday. Economists at Credit Suisse explain with stark clarity what this really means:

Labor demand is simply not strong enough to support a complete job recovery. Even if all job vacancies were filled overnight, almost 11 million workers would still be left unemployed.

Monthly job openings — unfilled, posted vacancies that employers plan to fill within 30 days — help describe demand for labor. The number has consistently hovered well below the 4.4 million openings registered in December 2007, before the 2007-2009 recession. Some 8 million Americans lost their jobs in the recession and only 1.4 million of those jobs have come back during the recovery.

Hiring rose marginally in August, with businesses and government hires climbing to 4.01 million from 3.98 million a month earlier, too small a gain to bring down the U.S. unemployment rate.  In a modest bright spot for workers, the Labor Department report on Wednesday showed the rate at which people quit their jobs, which can indicate workers’ confidence in their ability to find new jobs, rose to 51 percent in August from 50 percent in July.