WASHINGTON – The number of job openings in the U.S. economy climbed to the highest level in seven years, becoming the latest labor-market gauge to recover ground lost during the recession, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

Job openings rose to 4.5 million in April, according to the Labor Department's job-openings and labor-turnover survey, or JOLTS. The rate of job openings climbed to 3.1% in April from 2.9% in March, also near a seven-year high.

During the recession, which ran from December 2007 to June 2009, the rate of hiring and job openings collapsed while the rate of layoffs surged. The pace of layoffs declined during the second half of 2009 and 2010, as the economy regained its footing and has recovered to its prerecession levels. The rate of layoffs was 1.2% in April, flat from a month earlier.

Though layoffs have slowed, the pace of hiring has yet to recover. In April, 4.7 million workers were hired, the same number as in March. Before the recession, the level of hiring was often more than five million a month. Some economists think unemployed workers may lack the skills for many available openings or that employers may be discriminating against the long-term unemployed.

The JOLTS numbers are closely watched by officials at the Federal Reserve for signs of whether the labor market is nearing complete recovery, and Fed Chairman Janet Yellen has pointed to the rate of voluntary quitting in the report as a sign that workers are gaining enough confidence in the economy to take the risk of finding new employers.

A separate Labor Department report last week showed the economy has at last recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, with the total level of employment across the U.S. climbing to a new high. The unemployment rate, still at 6.3%, remains well above its level before the recession, and other barometers of labor-market health — such as the participation rate, which shows the number of people either working or looking for work, or the number of part-time workers who would like full-time work — remain depressed.