Economic oddity: Record job openings and many unemployed

By PAUL WISEMAN
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The disconnect is jarring: Across the United States, employers who are desperate to fill jobs have posted a record-high number of job openings. They’re raising pay, too, and dangling bonuses to people who accept job offers or recruit their friends. And yet millions more Americans are unemployed compared with the number who were jobless just before the viral pandemic flattened the economy a year and a half ago. The puzzling mismatch is a reflection of an unsettled economy — one that all but shut down at the height of the pandemic, then bounced back with unexpected speed and strength.