If fewer job openings are offering lower pay than most state and local governments anticipated, what is the likelihood that Greensboro’s 2009-2010 budget over anticipated expected employment and tax revenue relative to expenditure?

U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio

 

Despite signs that the economy has resumed growing, unemployed Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse.

 

Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000...And even though the pace of layoffs is slowing, many companies remain anxious about growth prospects in the months ahead, making them reluctant to add to their payrolls.

 

…The dearth of jobs reflects the caution of many American businesses when no one knows what will emerge to propel the economy. With unemployment at 9.7 percent nationwide, the shortage of paychecks is both a cause and an effect of weak hiring.

 

…For years, the economy has been powered by consumers, who borrowed exuberantly against real estate and tapped burgeoning stock portfolios to spend in excess of their incomes. Those sources of easy money have mostly dried up. Consumption is now tempered by saving; optimism has been eclipsed by worry.

 

Two recent surveys of newspaper help-wanted advertisements and of employers’ inclinations to add workers were at their lowest levels on record, noted Andrew Tilton, a Goldman Sachs economist.

 

Job placement companies say their customers are not yet wiling to hire large numbers of temporary workers, usually a precursor to hiring full-timers.

 

…During the last recession, in 2001, the number of jobless people reached little more than double the number of full-time job openings, according to Labor Department data. By the beginning of this year, job seekers outnumbered jobs four-to-one, with the ratio growing ever more lopsided in recent months.

 

…Despite the passage of a stimulus spending package aimed at shoring up state and local coffers, government job openings have diminished 17 percent this year.

 

Peter Goodman

New York Times, September 27, 2009