Heidi Shierholz: Still No Jobs for More Than 60 Percent of Job Seekers

By Heidi Shierholz

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that job openings increased by 60,000 in January, bringing the total number of job openings to 4.0 million. In January, the number of job seekers was 10.2 million (unemployment data are from the Current Population Survey). Thus, there were 10.2 million job seekers and only 4.0 million job openings, meaning that more than 60 percent of job seekers were not going to find a job in January no matter what they did. In a labor market with strong job opportunities, there would be roughly as many job openings as job seekers. We are not in a strong labor market. Furthermore, the 10.2 million unemployed workers understates how many job openings will be needed when a robust jobs recovery finally begins, due to the existence of 5.7 million would-be workers who are currently not in the labor market, but who would be if job opportunities were strong. Many of these “missing workers” will become job seekers when we enter a robust jobs recovery, so job openings will be needed for them, too.

Read rest here.

Paul Krugman's The Phony Fear Factor

Much has been said on how economic demagoguery continues to reign supreme, particularly by heterodox writers, so I won't delve much into this topic. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see that in his NYT op-ed, Paul Krugman, a pretty mainstream economist, disparages the 'confidence fairy' by citing Kalecki's “Political Aspects of Full Employment” (a Monthly Review link, interestingly enough). Though, Krugman somehow can't see much of Marx in Kalecki...does he not want to see it?

From the article:

"We live in a golden age of economic debunkery; fallacious doctrines have been dropping like flies. No, monetary expansion needn’t cause hyperinflation. No, budget deficits in a depressed economy don’t cause soaring interest rates. No, slashing spending doesn’t create jobs. No, economic growth doesn’t collapse when debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P. And now the latest myth bites the dust: No, “economic policy uncertainty” — created, it goes without saying, by That Man in the White House — isn’t holding back the recovery. 

First, however, I want to recommend a very old essay that explains a great deal about the times we live in.The Polish economist Michal Kalecki published "Political Aspects of Full Employment" 70 years ago. Keynesian ideas were riding high; a “solid majority” of economists believed that full employment could be secured by government spending. Yet Kalecki predicted that such spending would, nonetheless, face fierce opposition from business and the wealthy, even in times of depression. Why?"

Read rest here.

PS: Check also this earlier entry on Kalecki's paper.