August 2017
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A Record Number of Jobs Are Available

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Never before have there been this many job openings in America. While that might sound optimistic, the high number of empty positions is a double-edged sword for the economy. On the positive side, American employers are looking to hire. There are 6.2 million openings as of June—a stark contrast to the 2.2 million in the throes of the Great Recession. However, on the negative side, the reason for many of these openings is that employers can’t find workers with the skills they need to fill the vacancies. There are 388,000 manufacturing jobs, 225,000 construction jobs, and 23,000 mining jobs open according to the Labor Department, but the industries with the most vacancies are schools and hospitals. There are currently 1.2 million positions to be filled in health and education services. The federal government and President Trump in particular have expressed a hope to fill openings by investing heavily in apprentice programs in the construction and manufacturing sectors. Administration officials have said they will put $200 million toward ApprenticeshipUSA, but the proposed budget would significantly cut funding for job training programs for classroom-based learning.

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