Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Beveridge Curve Balancing Act: April 2010

Looking deeper at today’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover report you can see that while the unemployment rate is showing notable initial signs of establishing a peak, the job openings rate is showing an equal but opposite troughing dynamic.

Further, the latest data indicates that job hires are occurring at a rate of 3.7% of total employment while total job separations are occurring at a lessor rate of 3.4%.

So, currently hires are outpacing separations thus resulting in, more or less, a healthier job market and more evidence that the unemployment rate may be in the midst of a sustained topping.

It's important to note that today's data is very preliminary and volatile and that a more sustained and larger spread between the rate of hires and separations would be required to make a significant dent in our current structurally weak job market.