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It’s hard to envision with so many hunting for work, but in a few years there will be millions more job openings than available workers in the US according to new study. The authors of the Northeastern University study argue that the scores of Baby Boomers set to hit retirement age will lead to 14.6 million new nonfarm payroll jobs by 2018 — while only about 9.6 million workers will be available to replace them

Time and again here at EMSI, we’ve seen clients (workforce boards, community colleges, etc.) help people acquire new in-demand skills — and, most importantly, new jobs. But it’s not always that easy, especially during prolonged downturns like the one we’re in right now. To illustrate, The Wall Street Journal this morning has an excellent look [...]

It’s common these days to hear about economically devastated cities or regions still searching for faint glimmers of hope. But that’s not necessarily the case in Mount Airy, NC, a small town dominated by textile mills and tobacco fields and still well known as the inspiration for Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show.

An outstanding news story from today’s “Morning Edition” on NPR highlighted the struggle that faces many community colleges and workforce boards: Companies want new workers but can’t find people with the right skills, and lots of people are looking for new careers but aren’t qualified for the jobs that exist. The solution seems simple — just get the unemployed people into the new jobs.

It’s not surprising to see which two sectors have the most job openings, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) released today. Education and health services leads the way with an job opening rate of 3.1% while professional and business services stands at 2.5%.

Curious if the number of economists have grown or declined with the economy being such a focal point? Brian Kelsey at Civic Analytics was too, and he used EMSI data to investigate.

If you polled the average person on the street on which segment of the population makes more money — the private sector or federal employees — most would probably say the private sector. But not so according to a USA Today analysis.

So we stumbled upon an interesting discussion that took place last month on public radio business show Marketplace regarding the cost of job creation. Reuters financial blogger Felix Salmon used EMSI estimates from our fourth green jobs paper to say that it costs $200,000 of infrastructure investment to create one job.

Much has been made of the declining state of U.S. manufacturing in recent years, which makes sense when you look at the remarkable drop-off in employment. But manufacturing is far from dead, according to fivethirtyeight.com.