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Comment by jibe | Hacker News Reader

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSJOL

Job openings are still very high, ~30% higher than the average for the last few decades.

This has been called out by the Moody's Analytics economists in their podcast [0] for a while. The generally accepted explanation is that online job postings no longer map 1:1 to actual open positions at companies, ie many companies are not actually hiring despite having a listing for an open role.

This has become common enough that it has gained it's own term: "ghost" postings/listings.

[0] https://www.moodys.com/web/en/us/insights/podcasts/inside-ec...

We also have the unemployment numbers, and they are low. If job openings were largely ghost listings, and we were in a stealth recession, we'd see it in rising unemployment. Now unemployment HAS been creeping up, but still is low. If it hits 5% then I'd worry about a downturn.

Does this 5% include people who have fallen out of the unemployed bucket into some sort of long term bucket? I know multiple people who have been looking for 6 months+. Not to mention underemployed.

It never has. The labor force participation rate for 25-54 year-olds is a better metric for such things.[1] Last time it was this high was 1990s through 2002. (Before that, it was never this high.)

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

The shape of that graph is roughly equivalent to the shape of labor force participation for women [1]. I don’t think that detracts from your point in regards to the last 20-30 years, but in regards to “before that it was never this high” I think it’s evident that the societal shift of women joining the workforce is the reason, not an improvement in the economy.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002

The data in the FRED link doesn't come from online job postings but rather from surveys that businesses complete about their open positions. They don't really have much reason to lie in those surveys (or at least not any more than they have in the past?)

honest question, because it's something I don't understand well. is it possible the quantity of job openings can mask the quality of jobs openings? if job openings at fast food restaurants goes up 1000% maybe this isn't positive

You want to look at info broken down by sector and wages yeah. Look into "underemployment" for more

Yes, employment statistics rarely tell you anything about the quality of the jobs. And when they do tell something, it's the simplest information possible.

But the statistics are selected in a way that if a society maintains a low headline unemployment for a long time, it's correlated to an increase in the quality of the jobs¹. The correlation is still not perfect, and authoritarian countries love to redefine the date so their absolute value changes.

1 - More clearly, a constant low unemployment correlates to a positive derivative in quality. And a constant high unemployment correlates to a negative derivative in quality.

Cash is king. Look at change in income by quintile (or preferably decile, but I was too lazy to check mark all those and make a graph)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1Q95B&heig...

Shouldn’t job openings always trend upwards with increasing population?

FRED lets you control for population actually! It does flatten the change a bit but it's still a bump: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Q8J6

Is that still true? I would guess net immigration is 0 or negative at this point.

Fred also has that answer: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTHM

Growing up to an estimated 342 million.

It also has an estimate for the working population (ages 25-54, so called "prime workers"): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU00000060

Mostly flat from 2010-2021, with a recent uptick to 131 million. The discrepancy is likely due to the boomers aging out of the category, and a smaller generation coming in.

Maybe this isn't what you meant, but Millennials are the larger generation and they just finished aging into the workforce category.

The youngest Millennials were 18 in 2014 and 22 in 2018. At this point, it's the smaller Gen Z entering the workforce, not Millennials.

Let me put it another way: the [20, 25) and [25, 30) age cohorts are larger than any cohort aged 50+ that might have recently aged out. So that "prime age" workforce is still growing.

This could be true, but it isn't obviously true (to me). (I dispute a little bit the idea that there are many new workers in the [25, 30) demo.) There are 37M workers 55+, but only 20M in the 16-24 range: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18b.htm (2024 numbers)

Nobody in either of those cohorts is in the BLS "prime age" group which is [25, 55). The incoming cohorts that are now 15 to 25 are larger than the outgoing cohorts that are 45 to 55.

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you.

I don't understand how this chart can be true at all. Does this include ghost listings?

It comes from surveys based on this criteria:

> JOLTS defines Job Openings as all positions that are open (not filled) on the last business day of the month. A job is "open" only if it meets all three of the following conditions:

1. A specific position exists and there is work available for that position. The position can be full-time or part-time, and it can be permanent, short-term, or seasonal, and

2. The job could start within 30 days, whether or not the establishment finds a suitable candidate during that time, and

3. There is active recruiting for workers from outside the establishment location that has the opening.

Very likely which is the point of the ghost jobs and gives the illusion that the OP is falling for. Companies (especially publicly traded ones) do not want analysts at banks or hedge funds using their careers page as a good / bad signal.

Therefore, it is cope.

Fake job listings, possibly, but doubt. Fake low unemployment too?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

OK, how about employment, if the jobs are fake, this should be down:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS

"Cope" is ignoring every stat that disagree with what you want to believe. We aren't in a great economy, It looks like it is flattening, but not bad, not shrinking, and there is an abundance of jobs.

Arent a lot of job openings known to be resume collection bins and HRs keep them open so that company can say "Oh we created this many jobs but no was willing to work for us"

Thanks. It is very funny how young people perceive this market. Unemployment is basically lower than it has ever been and people are panicking. Prime age labor force participation rate near all-time record highs. The people are almost dangerously over-employed.

I'm young-ish transitioning to middle age (36).

The job market is AWFUL for my generation, and pretty much always has been since we entered the workforce.

Unemployment might be low if you think that folks with advanced STEM degrees can go and get a part time gig at McDonald's.

If you look at meaningful employment - where one can make enough to live near where they work, save a bit, pay food/rent, and spend a bit for their leisure or health, well....no we are not over-employed. We are in a death spiral.

You seem to be mostly making a cost of living argument, with which I wouldn't disagree. But you can't employ/pay your way out of those costs, the problem is on the supply side. So that seems spurious to an employment rate conversation.

I am slightly older than you, and literally don't know a person who isn't employed and doing well (including plenty your age and younger), though I am aware they exist.

It's almost like anecdotal reports are meaningless, and we should rely on well sourced data to determine how things like the economy are doing.

Spoiler alert: there is no indication we are in a death spiral, though in my opinion Trump seems to be doing his best to correct that. Fortunately, I don't think he's up to the task.

I founded a company partially because I spent 2 years on the job hunt and got absolutely nothing. So yeah, here's one example of someone who isn't doing well - me.

I was doing terribly. Honestly, I still am. I've just been fortunate enough to have conceived a product some people in my city want. Will the business scale and succeed? I hope so, because I'm fucked if it goes south.

And yes, anecdotal data sucks. But I'd take that over whatever bullshit the Trump administration says. Especially after they fired the BLS statisticians.

Genuine question: how did you conduct your job search? What steps did you take during those two years? Do you have a degree?

LinkedIn applications, applying to every PM role available in my metro area that I could, attending as many tech & startup events as I could. I got to know the main writer of the local startup/tech news aggregator pretty well and would pester him regularly for contacts at new local companies that he's talking with. I was active in my city's tech Slack/Discord community.

I do have a degree albeit on not in STEM. Also have an advanced degree (also not STEM) that helped the company I was with from 2018 until 2021.

I want to back this guy up because I was in the same hole.

See my above post. Basically, tons of applications, going to networking events 2-3x a week, being active in local tech Slack/Discord groups, bothering the lead writer of the local tech/startup newsletter, etc.

I'd like to back you up and point out that I've considered doing the same. If VCs will throw money at anyone promising to advance the SOTA in AI, and I can promise that, why am I bothering to keep looking for research positions or with a financially flailing industry employer?

Fair enough. My product is very much non-tech (CPG - beverage). But you're right that VCs are still throwing money around like its the ZIRP days. If you have an idea, go for it.

LOL the primary reason I haven't done it was needing to come up with a concrete business model and MVP.

Sounds like you're on to something, hope that's what turns things around for you.

Thank you. Fingers crossed

Because it measures open job listing. All of the job listing i've apply to and never hear back from still exist too. Take from that what you will.

I can assure you that has happened before. I just find it amusing. A professional now 25-30 years old started their career in what was the most spectacularly overheated labor market of all time. Now it is very very slightly cooling off, still way hotter than historical norms, and there are many complaints. But it is all relative.

The government has spent decades figuring out ways to lie about this. Are you actually shocked? The number of men who can buy a home and have a stay-at-home-wife on a random job they got out of high school is nigh 0% when this used to be the norm.

Leaving aside your misguided RETVRN subtext, none of this really comes down to government policy. All of it is an emergent wage-cost spiral. As soon as your neighbors collectively decide to have 2 incomes per household it becomes untenable to attempt to be the last household with only 1 income.

The government's demand for infinite migrants lowered wages, that is a fact.

Haha, you speak of ivory towers without even knowing so

In far more words this entire position is simply "let them eat cake" but without the excuse of a royal court distorting reality.

Willful ignorance is worse.

Correct. The prime age labor force participation rate is 0.8% lower than the all-time record highest in recorded US history, January 1999.

They're not

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