Job Openings Unexpectedly Surge, Driven Entirely By Government Jobs

After two months of sharp declines in the number of job openings, moments ago Biden’s highly politicized Department of Labor reported that in May, the number of job openings unexpectedly spiked by a whopping 221K, to 8.140 million – far above the 7.950 million estimate – from a downward revised April print of 7.919 million, down 140K from the original print of 8.059 million.

The 194K beat of estimates was the biggest since last August…

… but was only possible thanks to the huge downward revision in the past month; indeed, when we look back we find that the Biden DOL(ies) has now revised lower 14th of the past 17 months, something which statisticians would normally call “bullshit.”

Ok, fine revisions blah labh, but the current number of job openings was up no matter what. Well, when you look at the composition you get a slightly different idea: you see, of the 221K total increase in job openings, virtually all – or some 179K – were government jobs, which as everyone knows, are not real jobs but are simply parasites on taxpayers and create no actual economic output. And as shown below, government job openings are fast approaching record high.

And since virtually all the job growth was government jobs, one would expect that private job openings was a disaster…

… and sure enough, at 7.055 million it remained at a three year low.

To summarize: government job openings, which contribute nothing to the economy and are just a form of wealth redistribution, are soaring while private sector job openings are crashing.

Ignoring the data manipulation, in the context of the broader jobs report, in May the number of job openings was 1.5 million more than the number of unemployed workers (which the BLS reported was 6.649 million), up modestly from last month’s 1.427 million but otherwise the second lowest since the summer of 2021.

Said otherwise, in April the number of job openings to unemployed dropped to just 1.24, a sharp slide from the March print of 1.30, the lowest level since June 2021 and now officially back to pre-covid levels.

A quick look at the number of quits, an indicator closely associated with labor market strength as it shows workers are confident they can find a better wage elsewhere, shows that after March’s unexpected plunge by 118K (revised from a collapse 198K), in April and May we saw modest increases here, with the number of quits rising by 43K and 7K, respectively, but still holding at multi-year lows.

Linked to this, we find that amid the stagnant level of quits, the number of hires actually rose by 141K to 5.746 million, the highest since February.

Finally, no matter what the “data” shows, let’s not forget that it is all just estimated, and it is safe to say that the real number of job openings remains still far lower since half of it – or some 70% to be specific – is guesswork. As the BLS itself admits, while the response rate to most of its various labor (and other) surveys has collapsed in recent years, nothing is as bad as the JOLTS report where the actual response rate remains near a record low 33%

In other words, more than two thirds, or 70% of the final number of job openings, is estimated!

And at a time when it is critical for Biden to still maintain the illusion that at least the labor market remains strong when everything else in Biden’s economy is crashing and burning, we’ll let readers decide if the near record number of government job openings is an accurate reflection of a strong labor market, or is merely a reflection of a debt-funded deep state gone full tilt.