by Clifford F. Thies

In Germany, the unemployment rate is 6.1 percent and trending down. In the United States, the number released today is 9.1, and the number has been fluctuating in the low 9's for some time. There is a growing sense among my fellow economists that contributing to this difference is the solid financial shape of Germany, which has been running a deficit in the 2 to 3 percent range, relative to the U.S., which has been running a deficit of about 11 percent. In Germany, consumers, workers, employers and investors have more confidence in the future, while in the U.S. there is real concern. This, of course, has been my view for several years now.

Job growth in the U.S. remains enemic; overall, the demand for labor is down; and, there is a growing mis-match between the skills required for the jobs that are available and the skills among job applicants.

In the monthly estblishment survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 100,000 net new jobs were created during the past month, hardly enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising and not enough to cause the unemployment rate to fall. Looking at the monthly household survey of the BLS, the unemployment rate remained steady in spite of disappointing job creation because of continued weakness in labor force attachment. In addition, there were more people working part-time but wanting full-time work, which makes the stated unemployment rate less indicative of the actual difficulties faced by those seeking work.

According to the monthly survey of the Conference Board, the number of job openings listed on-line has fallen by about 500,000 over the past six months, so that today there are about 10 million more job seekers than jobs available .From 2005 to 2008, there was a rough eqyality in these figures. While overall job listings are down, job listings for healthcare professionals, especially nursing, are up; as is demand for technical workers. Demand for people in the construction area remains steady, but at a low level as compared to several years ago.

The disparity in the skills of job seekers with the skills required by job openings is indicated in the monthly survey of the National Federation of Independent Business. This year, the number of small businesses reporting unfilled job openings is about 50 percent higher than it was the prior two years.

Such mis-matching in the labor market is not unusal in recoveries nowadays. With the pace of change we now have, the economy that recovers from a recession is not the economy that fell into it. We saw this in the recoveries from the 1989 and 2001 recesssions. These were characterized as "jobless recoveries" as, for about two years after the start of the recovery, there was little net job creation. In this business cycle, we are now two and a half years from the end of the recession, with still no real indication of the start of a recovery.

CLIFFORD F. THIES is the Eldon R. Lindsey Chair of Free Enterprise Professor of Economics and Finance at Shenandoah Univ. in Virginia.Photo credit - WHIO radio