November 09, 2013
Folks at the Washington Post generally don’t like to have facts interfere with their stories about the world. We got another example of this behavior in its article on the Labor Department’s job numbers for October. The Post told readers:
“In addition, Chudars [Judy, Chudars, the president of a job placement firm in Washington] said, more people are voluntarily leaving their jobs for lateral positions — a key characteristic of a healthy labor market that economists call ‘churn.'”
Contrary to Ms. Chudars assertion, the Labor Department’s report showed a sharp drop in the share of unemployment due to people who had voluntarily quit their jobs, which would imply a decline in churn.
The article then repeated comments from Labor Department Secretary Thomas Perez:
““I’m heartened by the numerous conversations I have with employers who say, “I want to grow my business,”‘ Perez said. But they often add that ‘too many people coming through the door don’t have the skills that I need.'”
In fact the data show no evidence of any major skills shortage. Since the beginning of the downturn wages of non-production supervisory workers have actually risen on average somewhat more slowly than the generally less-skilled production and non-supervisory workers. In other words, the data imply that we just have a shortage of demand, not the skills shortage claimed by the WaPo’s friends.
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