Unfilled jobs are piling up in the transportation, retail and business-services sectors as workers become scarce in the fast-growing economy.
The number of available jobs grew by nearly 750,000 this spring, compared with a year earlier, according to Labor Department data released Tuesday. There were 6.7 million job openings on average in the three months ended in June—the highest quarterly level on record dating back to 2001. Economists often look at three-month averages for openings because the data can be choppy month to month.
Unfilled jobs are growing in nearly every industry because an expanding economy is demanding more labor and a historically low unemployment rate, 3.9% last month, means fewer workers are available. Overall in June, the number of available jobs exceeded the number of unemployed Americans by nearly 100,000.
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