Americans enjoy a historic high in employment openings.

An advertisement for job openings on March 9 in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.

An advertisement for job openings on March 9 in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. PHOTO: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

By James Freeman

March 19, 2018 3:47 p.m. ET

354 COMMENTS

The press corps has been so focused on the Friday firing of an FBI official for his alleged lack of candor under oath that it’s easy to miss all the hiring. It turns out that former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is hitting the job market at a nearly perfect time.

On Friday the Labor Department released its latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as the “Jolts” report. The feds reported a remarkable finding about the historic eagerness of businesses to hire. “On the last business day of January, the job openings level increased to a series high of 6.3 million,” noted the government.

The Journal’s incomparable Lev Borodovsky posts a series of charts today showing that the largest number of available positions ever recorded wasn’t the only good news. He also quotes Ron Temple of Lazard Asset Management:

The JOLTS data reaffirms our expectation for strength in the US economy and labor market through the rest of 2018. With a record high 6.3 million job openings, or 4.1% of all positions, we believe employers are going to have to pay up to fill the openings, leading to stronger wage growth and sustained consumer spending increases. If we take this together with the recent news that 1.3 million people joined the labor force in the first two months of the year, our confidence in ongoing economic growth and our expectation for labor market strength are reaffirmed.

This column is concerned about the government spending splurge due to be codified this week and rising protectionism on both sides of the Atlantic. But the news on jobs should give everyone a dose of confidence. Adds Mr. Borodovsky: “The ratio of jobs openings to unemployment reached 1.0 for the first time since the government started tracking the data.” In sum, the feds have no record of any time when jobs were so plentiful relative to job-seekers.

Odd as it sounds, there’s even more good news out of Washington. Following a February employment report showing more than 800,000 people joining the U.S. labor force, along comes another strong signal that Americans are moving off government assistance and into the workplace.

The Department of Agriculture reports that fewer people are using food stamps:

Spending for USDA’s 15 domestic food and nutrition assistance programs totaled $98.6 billion in FY 2017, 4 percent less than in the previous fiscal year and almost 10 percent less than the historical high of $109.2 billion set in FY 2013.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) accounted for 69 percent of all Federal food and nutrition assistance spending in FY 2017. On average, 42.2 million persons per month participated in the program, almost 5 percent fewer than in the previous fiscal year. Reflecting the decrease in participation, Federal spending for SNAP totaled $68.0 billion, or 4 percent less than in the previous fiscal year. This was also 15 percent less than the historical high of $79.9 billion set in FY 2013.

A number of recent reports paint an encouraging picture of Americans increasingly willing and able to find work.

And the opportunities in Washington, D.C. appear to be just as robust as in the rest of the country. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says that he fired Mr. McCabe because both the inspector general of the Justice Department and the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility “concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor − including under oath − on multiple occasions.”

Yet within 24 hours of his firing, Mr. McCabe had already attracted a series of unsolicited job offers from politicians eager to protect his government pension. The HuffPost says that Democrats are flooding the ex-official with invitations to join the congressional work force.

This column understands that Capitol Hill is hardly a bellwether of the larger economy and that legitimate private employers would likely wonder whether they could trust someone deemed untruthful by his colleagues at the FBI. Still, if Mr. McCabe can quickly find a new job, imagine the possibilities for people without his record.

America is hiring.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3923059&forum_id=2#35639679)