jobs and we've talked about this every month as we watch it, uh, finally dipped under 11 million, as Sachs predicted. You know, we're going to shed 3 or 400,000 jobs, it seems, every month, uh, which should take this, uh, you know, ten, 11 million number over the next year, down to maybe 5 or 6View on YouTube
Jason was describing the level of U.S. job openings (JOLTS), which were "finally dipped under 11 million" and around 10–11 million at the time of the August 2022 episode. He then projected that they would shed about 300–400k per month over the next year, taking openings "down to maybe 5 or 6" million.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS data, total nonfarm job openings in August 2022 were about 10.2 million on a seasonally adjusted basis.
- The BLS Monthly Labor Review chart shows 10.198 million job openings in August 2022. (bls.gov)
- The contemporaneous JOLTS release similarly reports 10.1 million job openings at the end of August 2022. (bls.gov)
One year later, job openings were still close to 9–10 million, not 5–6 million:
- The BLS JOLTS news release for August 2023 reports that job openings increased to about 9.6 million. (bls.gov)
- A later BLS table of seasonally adjusted series (TED: The Economics Daily) lists 9.287 million job openings in August 2023. (bls.gov)
Using these official figures, openings fell from roughly 10.2 million (Aug 2022) to about 9.3 million (Aug 2023), a decline of only ~0.9 million over 12 months—about 75k per month on average, far below the predicted 300–400k per month. And the level in August 2023 remained almost double the predicted 5–6 million.
Because both the magnitude of the monthly decline and the end-of-period level were far off, the prediction is wrong.