Report: U.S. job vacancy duration at a record
U.S. employers are taking more time than ever to fill a record number of job openings, according to a report issued Thursday, in a fresh indication of tightening labor market conditions.
Employers on average took 27.8 days to fill an opening in May, according to the DHI-DFH Mean Vacancy Duration Measure, a monthly report issued by DHI Group, operator of the technology jobs site dice.com. That was more than three days longer than a year earlier and 23 percent greater than in May 2007, before the onset of the financial crisis.
The data is related to the U.S. Labor Department's monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), a closely tracked measure of labor demand. On Tuesday, the JOLTS data for the same month showed 5.36 million job openings, a record since the report began in December 2000.
“The recent rise in vacancy durations is remarkable, and it lends more weight to the view that U.S. labor markets continue to tighten," Steven Davis, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and co-creator of the report, said in a statement.
The trend suggests "it has become harder for employers to find the right person for the job or that the recruitment and hiring process has become more cumbersome and drawn out - or both," he said.
Both the DHI-DFH and JOLTS reports lag the government's nonfarm payrolls report by a month, and both have been suggesting somewhat more strength in the job market than that benchmark survey.
Last week, the Labor Department said 223,000 jobs were created in June, down from 254,000 in May, and the unemployment rate dropped to a seven-year low of 5.3 percent. The drop in the jobless rate was largely due to an exodus from the workforce by discouraged job seekers.
While the average vacancy duration was around 28 days, several sectors are taking well over a month to fill openings. That includes more than 42 days in health services, 41 days in financial services, 36 days in tech and nearly 34 days in manufacturing.
The data also showed the duration of vacancies is growing in sectors dominated by unskilled or lower-skilled labor. The wholesale and retail trade sector averaged 20.3 days, up from 13.2 days in 2009, and leisure and hospitality openings went unfilled for 20.5 days, roughly double the length at the end of the recession.
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