Wall Street Journal (06/10/14) Josh Zumbrun

The number of U.S. job openings rose to 4.5 million in April, a seven-year high, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s job-openings and labor-turnover survey. Meanwhile, the rate of layoffs was 1.2% and the quit rate was 1.8%, both flat from a month earlier. However, the pace of hiring has been sluggish. Some 4.7 million workers were hired in April, the same number as in March. Prior to the 2007-09 recession, hiring often topped five million a month. Some economists speculate that unemployed workers may lack the skills companies are looking for or that companies may be discriminating against the long-term unemployed.