Job openings in the U.S. fell last month to “their lowest level since January 2021, a sign that the labor market is losing some momentum. Still, posted vacancies remain well above pre-pandemic levels,” reported the Associated Press.
The Labor Department reported Tuesday that the number of job openings dropped to 7.4 million in September from 7.9 million in August. “Economists had expected the level of openings to be virtually unchanged. Job openings fell in particular at healthcare companies and at government agencies at the federal, state and local levels,” according to the AP.
Reuters reported that “nearly all the decline in vacancies was in the South, suggesting that Hurricanes Helene and Milton had temporarily weighed on demand for labor.”
The number of layoffs also rose. And the number of Americans who quit their jobs fell below 3.1 million, the fewest since August 2020.
The “‘quits rate,’ which serves as both a gauge of employee confidence as well as an indicator of future wage growth, dropped to 1.9%. Outside of 2020, that’s the lowest quits rate since the summer of 2015,” according to CNN.
“Workers (are) not as confident as they have been about being able to find a job if they quit without another to step into,” Carl Weinberg and Rubeela Farooqi of High Frequency Economics wrote in a commentary. They added that “there is no signal here of any sudden collapse of the labor market or any imminent recession. The labor market is softer, sure, but it is not imploding.”
“Though job openings have fallen sharply since peaking at 12.2 million in 2022, they remain higher than they were before the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed the American economy in early 2020,” according to the AP.
Employers added 254,000 jobs in September. On Friday, the Labor Department is “expected to report that the economy added 120,000 jobs in October, a total that will likely be held down by the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and a strike at Boeing. The unemployment rate is expected to remain at a low 4.1%, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet,” reported the AP.
“The downbeat report from the Labor Department on Tuesday was countered by a Conference Board survey showing consumers' perceptions of the jobs market improved considerably in October, helping to lift consumer confidence to a nine-month high,” according to Reuters.
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