SOURCE:
BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEKURL:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-08/has-america-run-out-of-workers-to-fill-its-open-jobsby: Peter Coy
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Wednesday's report on the monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) has intensified concerns among some economists that the U.S. economy is running out of people who want jobs and are qualified to fill existing openings.
The number of openings rose to 5.8 million in April, from 5.7 million in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is tied with July's results for the highest number of openings since the recovery began. Hires, meanwhile, fell to 5.1 million, from 5.3 million, over the same period.
That "suggests that firms may be having difficulty in finding qualified employees in a tightening job market," Drew Matus, an economist at UBS Securities LLC, wrote on Wednesday. The headline on his analysis was "
Has The Well Run Dry?"
Even before the latest report, analysts were fretting that Friday's data on weak job growth was a sign that companies couldn't fill openings. The economy added just 38,000 jobs in May. The unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent, but only because the labor force shrank. Wages rose 2.5 percent over the past year, which isn't rapid but does indicate that companies are starting to compete for hard-to-get workers.
"All the ancillary data supports the idea that labor is becoming scarcer," wrote Charles Lieberman, chief investment officer at Advisors Capital Management LLC.
