October 08, 2014
That’s the story that we may hear based on new data on job openings and hires. The data showed a rise in the number of job openings in August, coupled with a fall in the number of hires.
This might seem to fit the skills mismatch story that many folks are pushing. The idea is that the jobs are out there, but unemployed workers just don’t have the necessary skills to fill them. If that’s the case, then we apparently need more people with the skills to work as retail clerks and table servers.
The gap in retail between openings and hires increased by 123,000 last month, as hiring fell by 83,000, in spite of a 40,000 increase in job openings. Job openings in accommodation and food services increased by 73,000 while hiring fell by 5,000, adding 78,000 to the gap. (There was also a sharp fall in hiring in construction in August, but this just partially reversed an extraordinary rise reported in July.)
Anyhow, if you want to believe the skills mismatch story, you have to believe that the mismatch is most serious in sectors that we don’t typically think require many skills.
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