US employers posted 3.74 million March jobs

MARTIN CRUTSINGER

AP Eco­nom­ics Writer

WASHINGTON — U.S. com­pa­nies in March posted the high­est num­ber of job open­ings in nearly four years, a sign that hir­ing could strengthen in the com­ing months after slow­ing this spring.

The Labor Depart­ment said Tues­day that employ­ers adver­tised 3.74 mil­lion job open­ings in March. That’s up from a revised 3.57 mil­lion in Feb­ru­ary and the most since July 2008, just before the finan­cial cri­sis erupted.

The increase in U.S. job open­ings sug­gests that weaker hir­ing gains in March and April could be tem­po­rary. It usu­ally takes one to three months for employ­ers to fill openings.

Even with the increase, roughly 12.7 mil­lion peo­ple were unem­ployed in March. That means an aver­age of 3.4 peo­ple com­peted for each open job. While that’s far bet­ter than the nearly 7-to-1 ratio when the reces­sion ended. In a healthy job mar­ket, the ratio is usu­ally around 2 to 1.

Last week the gov­ern­ment said employ­ers added just 115,000 jobs in April and 154,000 in March. That was a sharp decline from Decem­ber through Feb­ru­ary, when the econ­omy added an aver­age of 252,000 jobs per month.

Some of the slow­down in job growth in March and April may reflect a pay­back for unusu­ally warm win­ter. The warmer weather prob­a­bly exag­ger­ated job growth in the win­ter months and is now mak­ing the spring gains look smaller.

Jared Franz, an econ­o­mist at T. Rowe Price in Bal­ti­more, said that increase in job open­ings was evi­dence that “steady labor mar­ket heal­ing continues.”

Steven Ric­chi­uto, chief econ­o­mist at Mizuho Secu­ri­ties, said the report was con­sis­tent with gains of 175,000 jobs per month.

Tuesday’s report, known as the Job Open­ings and Labor Turnover sur­vey, or JOLTs, showed that more peo­ple quit their jobs in March.

More quits are a good sign because most peo­ple quit in order to move to a new job. Ris­ing quits sug­gest work­ers are find­ing more oppor­tu­ni­ties in the job market.

Nearly 4.36 mil­lion peo­ple were hired in March, slightly fewer than in Feb­ru­ary. The JOLTs report mea­sures gross job gains, while the monthly jobs reports are net fig­ures that are cal­cu­lated after sub­tract­ing lay­offs and quits.

The increase in open­ings reflected gains in two sec­tors vital to the economy’s health: man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­struc­tion. In March, fac­to­ries adver­tised 55,000 more open­ings, while con­struc­tion firms posted 23,000 more openings.

How­ever, gov­ern­ment job open­ings decreased by 26,000. The major­ity of the decline was at the state and local level, where gov­ern­ments con­tinue to face bud­getary pressures.

The unem­ploy­ment rate has fallen a full per­cent­age point since August to 8.1 per­cent last month — the low­est level since Jan­u­ary 2009.

Still, 8.1 per­cent unem­ploy­ment is painfully high. And part of the rea­son for the decline is more peo­ple gave up look­ing for work. Peo­ple who are out of work but not look­ing for jobs aren’t counted among the unemployment.

Many peo­ple with jobs are see­ing lit­tle in the way of pay increases.

The employ­ment report on Fri­day showed that the aver­age worker’s hourly pay rose by just one penny in April. Over the past year, aver­age hourly pay has ticked up 1.8 per­cent to $23.28. Infla­tion has been roughly 2.7 per­cent. Which means the aver­age con­sumer isn’t keep­ing up with price increases.

Posted by AP News on May 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.