Reader knzn leaves a comment in a post below, and a link to this interesting chart of "job vacancies" based on his own help-wanted index that combines both newspaper and Internet advertising.
That's a pretty compelling picture, but I'll repeat my response to his comment here: Just to clarify, my position is not that the labor market has been robust, or that it has been inaccurate to characterize it as weak for good chunks of time subsequent to the end of the recession. My point is that I am skeptical about the position that sluggish job creation has been the result of old-fashioned deficient demand, amenable to being fixed by stimulative fiscal and monetary policies.