New government data proves what many of jobseekers already know: There was little growth in the number of jobs available in June.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said there were 3.1 million job openings on the last business day of June, virtually unchanged from a month earlier. More than four times that number of people said they were looking for work that month.
The BLS also said the number of people hired was about equivalent to the number of people who left their jobs in the month. That is consistent with last week's estimate that the economy added a mere 46,000 jobs in June. With a labor force of 153 million, that represents almost no growth.
The number of job openings at 3.1 million has been relatively flat since February 2011 and remains well below the 4.4 million openings when the recession began in December 2007, the BLS said.
Job openings in June rose in mining and logging, retail trade, professional and business services, and health care and social assistance. Job openings fell for the federal government, partly because of the comparison with last year, when workers were still being hired for the decennial census.
The latest report is the job openings and labor turnover or JOLT survey.