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by 7e 2 days ago
A "job opening" is not a job. It's an aspirational advertisement.

Further, the graph shown is pretty noisy and I'm not sure the upward move which counters the downward trent is statistically significant.

4 comments

BLS doesn't look at job ads when compiling "job opening" data. Their method isn't perfect (nothing in life is), but far more comprehensive than you give it credit for.
So what do they look at?
The results of them actually talking to businesses and asking questions that are more than "did you have a job ad posted?" You are hardly the first person to imagine that job ads aren't representative of actual job opportunities. Obviously they are going to put in effort to avoid those weak signals.
How many businesses were surveyed?
As many as was required to find statistical significance. This S in BLS stands for statistics, after all.
What are the flaws in this methodology?
Can a crisis exist within noise?
You can also look at the BLS unemployment rate. Its also low. The predicted mass joblessness due to AI shows no sign of happening
Advertisement or trying to fool investors that they are growing