The Wall Street Journal reports:
The number of job openings in September fell slightly from an upwardly revised 7.29 million in August, the highest level on record. In August, openings outnumbered the unemployed by 1.06 million.
Before March, job openings had never exceeded unemployed workers in more than 17 years of monthly records. Most of the decline in openings occurred in the South, the region hit by Hurricane Florence in mid-September.
The average time to fill vacant job positions reached a record high of 32.3 working days in September, according to an analysis of underlying data by Steven Davis, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
In some higher-skilled industries jobs were open for even longer. Vacancy durations exceeded 40 working days in the information, health services and financial services sectors, the analysis showed.
“Information and health services have seen strong growth in recent years,” said Mr. Davis, who is also a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “Which suggests that the growth in demand for jobs in these sectors may be outpacing the growth in supply of people with the requisite skills.”
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