Bureau of Labor Statistics Releases Grim Details About Job Openings

In December 2008, there were 2.7 million job openings, which was a 35% decrease from July 2007. July 2007 is cited as the beginning of the downward spiral in which jobs openings across the nation began to dwindle, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

The rate of job openings, which compares the nation’s job openings to the number of jobs plus the number of openings feel to 1.9% in December. The US has not seen that number fall below 2% since 2000. It was at 2.8% in late 2007.

Retail is a sector that has been particularly hard hit as far as job openings. There were 305,000 job openings in retail in December, which was significantly less than the 386,000 job openings in November. Education and health services saw a decline of around 50,000 job openings, going from 604,000 in November, to 553,000 in December.

New hires for December were down 19% (900,000) from 2007.

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