Jobs opening up in U.S., but drop in Arizona

PHOENIX — Arizona is bucking a national trend.

The U.S. Labor department said that in June, American companies posted the most job openings in four years, at 3.8 million. That’s up from 3.7 million in May.

The same isn’t true for Arizona.

“It looks like we went down about 1.6 percent here in June,” said Theresa Maher of Jobing.com.

Maher said that’s less of a drop than in previous months.

“In June 2011 it was 2.4 percent, and the year before that was 2.6 percent, so we’re going in the right direction,” she said.

Maher said that schools closing for the summer were a factor in Arizona losing jobs in June.

“We do know that they scale back, and that also affects some of the government positions,” said Maher. “It’s no surprise that we’re seeing some job loss, but the fact that the job loss is on a much smaller scale is positive news for Arizona.”

According to Maher, there are job openings in Arizona in the legal and engineering fields and some companies are rehiring workers that they had previously laid off.

“Some of these companies had scaled down during the downturn in the economy and held off on bringing those positions back, but are slowly starting to reintroduce those,” said Maher.

“I think some are also experiencing some growth in terms of new developments and new divisions, and are finally starting to see an upswing, so they’re looking to have additional support to what they had previously.”