All Those Job Openings -- Commentary -- September 8, 2021

I get a kick out of all that (faux?) hand-wringing over eleven million job openings, an all-time record, up from ten million anticipated. Numbers rounded. 

Instead of an excess of ten million jobs, would one rather have a deficit of ten million jobs? To put this in perspective, from the internets:

In the United States, unemployment rose to 25 percent at its highest level during the Great Depression. Literally, a quarter of the country's workforce was out of work. This number translated to 15 million unemployed Americans.

And not much of a safety social net.

 
My thoughts, not ready-for-prime-time.

 

The way to have prepared for this -- this lack of workers -- more automation. And that's why I have suggested 2020 - 2035 would be squeezed into 2020 - 2025 due to Covid.

Second, the companies with deep pockets will be able to pay more for workers.

So, those companies with deep pockets and those that prepared for this during the plague year (2020) will do quite well.

I don't think "they" could have predicted the magnitude of openings vs workers, but certainly they had to imagine there would be a huge need for workers when the global economy opened up again. And they all knew the economy would eventually open up, again. So, there was no excuse, at least from my armchair in the ivory tower.

I can't wait to see some analysis of this in a year or so.

This is very, very different when there are not enough jobs and too many unemployed during a recession (or a depression).

We have 5.2% unemployment; folks are getting great unemployment benefits; and all these job openings.

The bigger question and this is where the analysis will help: how much are companies really hurting? Mom-and-pop retail, restaurants, etc., are definitely hurting but earnings in publicly traded big companies seem to be doing very, very well.

So, we see a lot of stories about all these job openings, but I'm not reading any great analyses.

I would love to see where all these job openings are. For example: in the weekend edition of the Dallas newspaper -- two full pages of job openings for software engineers -- the folks that write software for video games. Nothing else even came close to two full pages of job openings. So, does it matter that there are a gazillion job openings for software engineers writing code for video games?

Somehow, the US economy seems to move along quite nicely.

In fact, the story that CNBC will start addressing over the next few weeks: the job openings were not due so much to that extra Covid unemployment insurance but rather due to the mismatch in skills. There are simply not enough software engineers to meet the demand.

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Speaking of Hand-Wringing

There's a news report that Covid-19 cases are up 30%.  

For the record, I don't pay much attention to the number of cases any more. I follow the number of cases, but I don't put much stock into those numbers any more. I don't know the definition of "a case" -- if it's simply a positive test -- all the increased testing easily explains much of the jump.

Our local elementary school is now averaging one new case / day and the school has not yet shut down. Yesterday, there were eight new cases reported: four second graders (Sophia's grade); three fourth graders; and, one staff member (probably a teacher). It was the first day after Labor Day weekend, and the number of cases was from around September 2. 

I did not ask Sophia; I was curious if she would bring it up. She said not one word about Covid. Speaks volumes.

The school e-mails the number of positive cases to all parents (and grandparents, in our case).

The metric, for me, that replaces the number of Covid cases? The number of college students in the 100,000-seat-football stadiums on the weekend. Our oldest granddaughter, a college freshman, went to a sold-out college football game on opening day this past weekend. 

Wanna bet the Dallas Cowboys - Tampa Bay Buccs will be sold out tomorrow night? And no masks?