Despite the fact that last week's unemployment report wasn't particularly strong, there are signs on the horizon that we may be seeing an uptick in hiring over the next few months. The Labor Department reported yesterday that job openings increased by 225,000 in September, and now stand at 3.35 million. That's the highest they've been since August 2008 - a month before the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy triggered the meltdown of the nation's financial sector.
While we generally look at jobs added to see how the employment situation is changed, the hiring records are actually much larger than those numbers. Overall, employers hired 4.25 million workers in September, up from 4.06 million in August, although most of those were obviously already employed before they took on their new positions. Clearly, there are jobs out there.
Does that mean we'll see some improvement in the unemployment numbers in coming months? It's very possible. Some experts even think we could see an upward revision to October's relatively weak new-jobs figure of 80,000.
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