In the July jobs report the latest number of US job openings keeps establishing a new record – this time at 10.1 million according to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Normally job openings in a recovery period would be a welcome sign, but not at this point. This is because jobs continue to go unfilled.
Quit rates also remain elevated at 2.7%. By comparison normal quit rates range from 2.0 to 2.5%. Continued unemployment claims recently dipped below 3 million but still are the highest they have been since 2013 (on a pre-pandemic level).
Open Jobs
The age of all open job postings according to data compiled in our Insight for Work application is 63 days. This is an increase of five days from last month as shown below. There still remains over 250,000 jobs active that were originally posted in January.
Consumer facing industries continue to set the pace for the higher open days. However we are also seeing higher open days in healthcare and human resources. Unfortunately this is causing a drag on new job postings which remain flat at 2.76 million in July. Employers naturally won’t post new jobs if old ones remain unfilled.
Remote Work
As expected postings marked as temporarily remote declined in July. However, permanent remote positions continue to increase from 1.70% in June to 1.81% in July. While this seems like a very low number, it can be as high as 30% in some industries. Further, it continues to trend higher as many employers evaluate their work policies.
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