Job Seeker Blog - Spark Hire

Job Openings From March Show Our Improvements

When dealing with and talking about the job market, Spark News has found that it’s best to stay on the positive. After all, who wants to constantly hear about how bad things are or how weak the job market is. If you are looking for a job, you already understand that to be fact, and if you have a job then you can empathize with the people in the country that don’t. It’s tough, we know this. However, there seems to be sporadic reports in the news of how we are starting to pick up and improve. Of course, these have always popped up- perhaps in hopes of increasing our optimism and making us see the situation as a glass-half-full kind of thing. These can work to lift our spirits, but if the jobs aren’t there they just aren’t there. That is why we get more excited when we hear of how many actual jobs are available in our country. When the numbers starts to increase, our smiles can too.

Well, according to the Labor Department, the number of jobs that were posted and available this past March was the highest we have seen since July 2008- which was right before we fell into the Great Recession and experienced all of our economic woes. Specifically, in March of this year American employers posted and advertised 3.74 million job openings. That’s an increase from the 3.57 million that were posted in February. USA Today suggests that this large amount of open jobs can prove that the slow hiring that took place last month and even in March is just temporary. Since it takes companies about a month to three months to fill a position, a good portion of these jobs still need to be filled.

Even with job openings returning back to pre-recession levels, at least for a month, there were still about 3.4 people on average for each job opening. In a healthy job market, the ratio would be more around 2 to 1. However, if you look back at the 7 to 1 ratio we experienced right around the end of the recession, we are doing much, much better. On top of that, there were more people that quit their jobs in March than before. The findings came out of the Labor Department’s survey called the Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLT). Spark News discussed yesterday what more people quitting their job means for the health of the job market. (Hint: It’s good.)

Hopefully when the results of the open positions for April are released, they will show a trend of growing job opportunities for our country. With so many unemployed right now, approximately 13 million people, it is well known that we need an increase in available jobs to help us out.

Are you unemployed and still looking for work? What kind of luck have you had? Have you seen more opportunities lately? Tell me about it in the comments or tweet me @nicole_spark.

SOURCE: USA Today
IMAGE: Courtesy of MAU

Nicole Nicholson

Nicole is the Content Editor for Spark Hire and mainly writes for and edits the work for the Spark News blog. She graduated in 2010 with a BA in Journalism from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. She has a passion for writing, editing, and pretty much anything to do with content. In her free time she frequents the Chicago music scene and writes reviews on shows for her own personal blog. Connect with Nicole and Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter

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