US job openings fell in November to their lowest level since March 2021, in a sign that America’s resilient job market is continuing to cool.
There were a seasonally adjusted 8.79 million job openings in November, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. That’s down from October’s upwardly revised 8.85 million and roughly in line with economists’ expectations of 8.77 million openings, according to FactSet.
While job vacancies are down from a record 12 million in March 2022, they’re still above pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, also known as the JOLTS report.
Wednesday’s figures show that the job market is continuing its steady cooldown, with economic activity slowing as interest rates remain at a 22-year high. Federal Reserve officials have said the economy might need to slow even further to be assured that inflation is on its way to the central bank’s 2% target.
Job openings in infrastructure and the federal government fell sharply in November, by 128,000 and 58,000 respectively. Openings in leisure and hospitality also tumbled in November, by 97,000. Meanwhile, openings in wholesale trade jumped by 63,000 that month.
In another sign of a cooling labor market, the report also showed that the number of hires fell by 363,000 in November to 5.47 million. That’s the lowest level since April 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic first upended the US economy. However, even excluding the pandemic’s initial disruption, hires haven’t been at that level since 2017.
Layoffs and the number of quits both fell in November. The former remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
The latest JOLTS report isn’t ringing any alarm bells that the job market is falling off a cliff, but is instead keeping the possibility of a soft landing — where the economy cools off without increased unemployment — in play.
“Today’s JOLTS data is another signal that the Fed is delivering a soft landing,” wrote Ron Temple, chief market strategist at Lazard, in a note issued Wednesday. “Today’s report is good news for American workers and the economy, but it also suggests to me that the Fed is unlikely to cut rates as aggressively in 2024, as markets currently indicate, given the risk of reigniting inflationary pressures.”
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