As US companies scramble to hire, workers enjoy upper hand

With the economy growing rapidly as it reopens from the pandemic, many employers are becoming desperate to hire

WASHINGTON -- With the economy growing rapidly as it reopens from the pandemic, many employers are becoming desperate to hire. Yet the evidence suggests that as a group, the unemployed aren’t feeling much urgency to find work. How those two trends balance themselves out will likely set the pace for how many open positions employers can fill in the coming months. On Friday, analysts expect the government to report that the economy added 675,000 jobs in June. That would be a substantial gain but nowhere near as many hirings as would be expected given the demand for labor and the record-high number of job openings. In fact, some economists have estimated that monthly job growth would be at least twice what the three-month average gain was for March, April and May — 540,000 — if there were no constraints on the number of workers available to fill jobs.