West Virginia GOP right about job openings, unemployed workers

In a recent tweet, the West Virginia Republican Party offered an example of how well the national economy is performing.

On Aug. 10, the party tweeted, "ICYMI: For only the second time since 2000, there are more job openings than Americans who are unemployed. Tax reform and a pro-growth agenda have unleashed America's economic engine. #WVGOP #WVComeBack"

Is this correct?

We turned to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the official federal data source for employment figures. The bureau collects both statistics -- job openings and unemployed workers.

We produced a chart to show how those trend lines interact:

The chart makes it clear: For the first time since both statistics were recorded at the same time, the number of job openings, shown in blue, has exceeded the number of unemployed workers, in red, in recent months.

Featured Fact-check

Barack Obama

stated on October 27, 2010 in an interview on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"

"Most of the jobs that we lost were lost before the economic policies we put in place had any effect."

This was the case in March, April, May and June. So the tweet understated the number of times, but was otherwise accurate.

The West Virginia Republican Party tweeted, "For only the second time since 2000, there are more job openings than Americans who are unemployed."

In March, April, May and June, the number of job openings was higher than the number of unemployed Americans -- the first time since that has happened since both statistics were calculated.

That’s four times rather than two, so the tweet actually undersold the accomplishment. We rate the statement True.