I hear it over and over from my co-workers and friends:
"The jobs are out there if you want to work."
I got sick and tired of hearing it, so I decided to do some research. In the process I stumbled across a research paper at the Bureau of Labor Statistics that pretty well blows up the "jobs are out there" lie.
The paper is "Job availability during a recession: an examination of the number of unemployed persons per job opening" (pdf) and it was written by Katherine Klemmer, an economist with the Division of Administrative Statistics and Labor Turnover within the BLS.
She took job opening data and compared it to unemployment data. She notes that
There are some caveats that accompany using the JOLTS and CPS data sources since they are two distinct surveys that are sampled and designed to collect different types of information. However, this ratio can provide a way to look at the changing composition of labor supply as it relates to labor demand.
She then gets to the meat of the story:
the ratio of unemployed persons per job opening has increased since 2006 from a series of low ratios ranging between 1.4 and 1.6 unemployed persons per job opening to a high of 6.2 unemployed persons per job opening in November 2009. This is the highest ratio of unemployed persons per job opening since the JOLTS survey began to track job openings in December 2000.
Did you catch that? We started out in 2006 with roughly a 1.5-to-1 ratio of job seekers to job openings. Now there are six unemployed people for every job opening, nation-wide.
The graph is pretty dramatic, as you would expect.
Think that's bad? Yeah, it is -- real bad. But check THIS out:
Construction has shown the most dramatic increase in the ratio of unemployed persons per job opening. From a period of low ratios during the summer of 2007, including a low of 3 unemployed persons per job opening in July 2007, the ratio climbed to a high of 56 unemployed persons per job opening in April 2009. The unemployed-persons-per-job-opening ratio stood at 37.2 to 1 in January 2010.
Manufacturing also showed a large increase in the ratio of unemployed persons per job opening, climbing from a low of 2 persons per job opening for most of 2006 and early 2007 to a high of 19.1 persons per job opening in May 2009.
Here's that graph:
We knew in our gut that the "you can get a job if you want to" meme was just a way to ignore the reality and salve the conscience of the greedy among us. A ratio of 6 job seekers per job opening just makes it starkly clear: There aren't enough jobs, no matter how much you may wish it so --- and cutting of unemployment benefits when the jobs haven't returned is evil.
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UPDATE from the comments:
PVLB notes that he was looking at a jobs board today and was able to see the number of views for each job posting. Get this: low-paying, non-profit jobs were getting over 3,000 views each. Damn.