Washington Post recognizes that new hires is lower in the recovery than it was during the recession

The Washington Post Fact Checker had this discussion last week:

We spoke with John Lott, an economist and Fox News contributor who helped Norquist come up with his numbers. The gist of Norquist’s figures appears to be correct, according to our own calculations of seasonally adjusted BLS data on job openings and labor turnover.
Overall, the number of new hires has decreased slightly from an average of about 4.3 million per month during the recession to an average of 4.1 million per month during the 32 months on record since the end of the downturn. . . .
Norquist made a valid point that the number of new hires has dropped on average since the recession ended, and that’s certainly something the president needs to address. . . .

Democrats explain it like this:

Democrats argue that these numbers miss the larger point: that the economy is adding jobs overall. Indeed, our calculations show that net job turnover — new hires minus layoffs, retirements, and so forth — is positive. In fact, it’s right where it left off before the recession, with the United States averaging roughly 200,000 more jobs per month.
“There’s no question that the job market is improving,” said Jared Bernstein, former adviser to Vice President Biden and senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. “It’s definitely improving too slowly, but at least let’s get the sign right. It’s not a negative right now, it’s a positive.” . . . .

The problem is that quits have fallen and quits fall because people are afraid that it would be difficult to find a new job.