🔴 Website 👉 https://u-s-news.com/
Telegram 👉 https://t.me/usnewscom_channel
The American Lookout Headlines homepage has 60 new headlines every 24 hours – click here to see it.
Economists surveyed by the Dow Jones were looking for 8.1 million job openings, the number came in at 7.67 million.
This is the lowest since 2021. Last month’s number was also revised lower.
Job openings slumped to their lowest level in three and a half years in July, the Labor Department reported Wednesday in another sign of slack in the labor market.
The department’s closely watched Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed that available positions fell to 7.67 million on the month, off 237,000 from June’s downwardly revised number and the lowest level since January 2021.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 8.1 million.
With the decline, it brought the ratio of job openings per available worker down to less than 1.1, about half where it was from its peak of more than 2 to 1 in early 2022.
…
“The labor market is no longer cooling down to its pre-pandemic temperature, it’s dropped past it,” said Nick Bunker, head of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “Nobody, and certainly not policymakers at the Federal Reserve, should want the labor market to get any cooler at this point.”
Layoffs also rose from 1.56 million to 1.76 million.
Layoffs rose from 1.56 million to 1.76 million, the most since March 2023, though that level of job cuts is roughly consistent with pre-pandemic levels, when the unemployment rate was historically low. Layoffs have been unusually low since the economy’s rapid recovery from the pandemic recession, with many employers intent on holding onto their workers.
Overall, Wednesday’s report painted a mixed picture of the job market. On the positive side, total hiring rose in July, to 5.5 million, after it had fallen to a four-year low of 5.2 million in June. And the number of people who quit their jobs ticked up slightly, to about 3.3 million. The number of quits is seen as a measure of the job market’s health: Workers typically quit when they already have a new job or when they’re confident they can find one.
Still, quits remain far below the peak of 4.5 million reached in 2022, when many workers shifted jobs as the economy accelerated out of the pandemic recession. The spike in quits at that time helped drive up wage gains as companies jacked up pay to try to find or keep employees. The current lower level of quits suggests that wage increases will likely remain modest, which should help further cool inflation.