Job openings are likely to continue to rise

WASHINGTON --- Job openings rose sharply earlier this year, evidence that employers are slowly ramping up hiring as the economy improves.

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The number of openings in January rose about 7.6 percent, to 2.7 million, compared with December, the Labor Department said. That's the highest total since February 2009.

The report is a sign the economy is likely to generate consistent job gains soon. Some economists expect employers to add up to a net 300,000 jobs in March, though as many as a third of them could be temporary hiring for the 2010 Census.

Hiring is critical to sustaining the recovery because job growth boosts incomes and helps restore the confidence needed to drive consumer spending. A gradual increase in hiring would help prevent the recovery from fizzling.

There are about 5.5 unemployed people, on average, competing for each opening. That's still far more than the 1.7 people who were competing for each opening when the recession began. But it's down from just over 6 people per opening in December 2009.

Economists were encouraged by the report but cautioned that hiring likely will increase only slowly this year.

"It's getting better, though not as quickly as you'd like," said Dan Greenhaus, the chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak.

The economy has lost 8.4 million jobs since the recession began, the largest drop since the 1930s. The jobless rate was unchanged last month at 9.7 percent. Most economists expect the rate to remain elevated for several years.

The transition to job growth "is an important step in the expansion," Nigel Gault, the chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, wrote in a note to clients. "It will not change the story that this will be a subdued recovery ... but will reduce the odds of a relapse."

The gradually brightening jobs picture corresponds to what many job search Web sites are reporting. The Monster employment index, a measure of online postings by the job board Monster.com, rose 2 percent in February compared with the previous year. That was the first year-over-year increase since December 2007, the company said.

Indeed.com, which aggregates listings from thousands of online career boards and company sites, is also seeing improvement. The company said last week that 10 of the 12 industries it tracks posted more job openings in February than they did a year ago.

"We have seen a sharp turnaround in the job market in the last few months," said Paul Forster, the CEO of Indeed.com.

Management consulting firm Accenture PLC plans to hire 50,000 employees worldwide by the end of August, according to spokesman Alex Pachetti. More than 7,000 of those jobs will be in the United States, he said.

The Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey illustrates the heavy job turnover that occurs even in a sluggish economy. Employers hired about 4.08 million people in January, the report said. At the same time, 4.12 million people were fired or left their jobs.

Job openings are down sharply from prerecession levels. There were nearly 4.4 million available positions in December 2007, the government said, compared with the 2.7 million openings in January. Most of the January job gains were concentrated in education and health care, the report said.