Businesses were supposed to be having an easier time hiring workers by now. So much for that.
The Labor Department’s monthly job opening and turnover report released Friday showed the labor market is unambiguously tight. There were 10.4 million job openings at the end of September, amounting to 1.4 jobs for each unemployed person seeking work. That was the highest the ratio has been in the 21-year history of the report. Another measure of tightness, the number of job openings to the number of people hired during the month, remained near a record high. Finally, people quit a record 4.4 million jobs in September, in many cases probably because they found better work elsewhere.
