A store front window in Miami Beach. Joe Raedle | Getty Images

The number of job openings in the U.S. is at a record high, but many of those jobs aren't being filled. For the first time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking openings in 2000, employers reported more job openings than hires in the recent JOLTS report for April—an indication that there is a mismatch between the jobs available and potential employees. But the new gap between openings and hires isn't universal. It's driven by a handful of sectors, and one in particular.



Let's take a look at the jobs gap—the number of openings minus the number of hires in a month—broken down by sector. A negative gap means that an industry is advertising more open positions than it is hiring in a month, an indicator that finding workers to fill positions is more difficult in that industry. It becomes clear that while openings are catching up to hires as the economy recovers, specific industries have far more openings than hires. Out of the 10 private sectors, the biggest negative gap is in education and health services, which includes school and hospital employees.

The education and health services sector alone employs 22 million Americans, or about 16 percent of all employees in the United States. The gap between openings and hires in the sector has been growing, and is now at least 10 times bigger than it was at the end of the recession. Four other private sectors—manufacturing, professional and business services, information and financial activities—also reported more openings than hires, but the changes were less dramatic. Five other sectors still report fewer openings than hires, suggesting that worker supply is meeting demand in construction, retail, hospitality and mining. Overall, jobs in education and health services accounted for about 19 percent of the 5.4 million job openings in the U.S. in April, but only 12 percent of the hires. That's 400,000 more advertised jobs than filled positions, compared to a net of about 370,000 for the U.S. as a whole. So most of the new negative gap can be attributed to the shortfall in this one part of the economy. Much of the widening of the gap has happened since the beginning of 2014, which corresponds to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, which requires that most Americans have health insurance. But even without that boost, the health care and social assistance sector has been booming, with employment growing by 25 percent in the last decade, compared to 6 percent for the economy overall. "With the baby boomers advancing in age, they need everything from a specialist all the way down to home health-care aids," said Charlotte Oslund, a BLS statistician. "The demand is there."

Not enough doctors and nurses