There is a reason why the monthly BLS JOLTS jobs supply/demand survey - which supposedly shows an "improving" labor picture because more people are willingly leaving their (temporary) jobs, and there are more job openings - is so laughable it is not even worth reporting. The reason is the following: practical, non-massaged reality, such as this report confirming how great the demand for any real job openings is. According to Bloomberg Delta, the world’s second-largest carrier, received 22,000 applications for about 300 flight attendant jobs in the first week after posting the positions outside the company. The applications arrived at a rate of two per minute, Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson told workers in a weekly recorded message. Applicants will be interviewed in January and those hired will begin flying in June, for the peak travel season. Said otherwise, the previous few lucky hires will have overcome an acceptance ratio of 1.3%. Putting this into perspective, the acceptance ratio at Harvard, the lowest of any university, is 5.9%. In other words, it is 4.5x easier to enter Harvard than to get a job at Delta. As an attendant. And there is your jobs supply-demand reality in one snapshot.
The good news? This is actually an improvement from 2 years ago, when the Atlanta-based carrier received 100,000 applications for 1,000 jobs when it last hired flight attendants in October 2010.
But wait there is hope: a spokeswoman, said it could reach 400, pushing the acceptance ratio to a whopping 1.8%. All the successful applicants will need to do is speak Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin or Portuguese.
And now back to your Orwellian reality where the unemployment rate is falling, and there is absolutely no secular mismtach between job skills and demands in today's centrally-planned economy.