The number of jobs U.S. employers are looking to fill climbed at the end of April to 10.1 million, the highest level of openings since January.
The Federal Reserve has been attempting to cool off demand for labor and has taken comfort in the declines in openings earlier this year. The April figure shows most of that progress has been reversed and openings are back to a level likely to make the Fed hesitant to hold back on further rate increases.
Job listings for March were revised up from 9.59 million to 9.754 million, indicating that the labor market was hotter than previously thought.
Economists had expected openings to fall to 9.35 million, according to Econoday. The top of the range of projections in Econoday’s survey was 9.775 million, so the actual figure was higher than expected even by the analysts most bullish on the labor market.
Fed chair Jerome Powell and other central bank officials frequently point to the ratio of job openings to unemployed people as a key indicator of labor market tightness. The rise in openings pushes this from around 1.6 to one to 1.8 to one, closer to the record high of nearly two to one hit last summer.
The number of people quitting jobs, which is regarded as a measure of worker confidence in the ability to find new and better work, remains at a highly elevated 3.79 million, down only slightly from the month before. This metric fell below four million in January for the first time since 2021 but has since gotten stuck at a historically high number.
Layoffs also declined to 1.58 million, around one percent of the workforce, from 1.845 million. This is a low level by historical standards.
The bigger picture here is that the labor market remains extremely tight, putting upward pressure on wages and prices. This is likely to be seen as a warning to the Fed not to back off of rate hikes.
The data come from the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as JOLTS.
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