Volume 1, Number 2 (Fall) 1966
Joseph, Myron L. 1966. “Job Vacancy Measurement.” Journal of Human Resources 1(2): 59-80.
U.S. data on employment have lacked crucial information on the demand for labor. The only available data have been those collected by the National Bureau of Economic Research on help-wanted advertising, and those from the Bureau of Employment Security on job applicants. Recently, however, the Department of Labor has launched a program to develop more information on job vacancies, based on two important feasibility studies. Yet there has still not been enough analytical work done to enable proper interpretation of the level or pattern of job vacancies. At the present time there are no grounds for assuming that job vacancies are equivalent to the excess demand for labor, although such data can be used to measure market maladjustment. The paper also raises several conceptual problems concerning job vacancies.
Given this situation, the article concludes that, although price and wage stability is a complex function of total flow and duration of unemployment, as well as of the total flow and duration of vacancies, we do not know what patterns are consistent with stability. Haste to use vacancy data means the sacrifice of careful research on the significance of such data.
Dr. Joseph is Professor of Economics and Head of the Department of Administration and Management Science at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. The research activity in connection with this paper was supported in part by the Berkeley Unemployment Project under a grant from the Ford Foundation. I would like to acknowledge the extensive help of Vin Hoey and the perceptive critical comments of Gerald Somers.
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US ISSN 0022-166X