U.S. job openings rose unexpectedly in August as the American labor market continued to show resilience.
The Labor Department reported Tuesday that employers posted 8 million vacancies in August, up from 7.7 million in July. Economists had expected openings to be virtually unchanged. Openings were up in construction and in state and local government.
Layoffs fell in August. But the number of Americans quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in their job prospects — slid to the lowest level since August 2020 when the economy was reeling from COVID-19 lockdowns.
Job openings have come down steadily since peaking at 12.2 million in March 2022, but they remain above where they stood before the coronavirus pandemic hit the American economy in early 2020. When the economy roared back with unexpected strength from COVID-19 lockdowns, companies scrambled to find enough workers to keep up with customer orders.
The overheating economy caused an outburst of inflation, and the Federal Reserve responded by raising its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. Inflation has come down — from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 2.5% in August.
The economy proved surprisingly resilient in the face of the Fed hikes, averting a widely forecast recession. But the job market has gradually lost momentum. Hiring averaged just 116,000 net new jobs a month from June through August — the weakest three-month average since mid-2020.
When the Labor Department releases its jobs report for September on Friday, it is expected to show that employers added 143,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate remained at a low 4.2%, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.
The Fed, satisfied with the progress against inflation and worried about the cooling job market, last month cut its benchmark rate by a hefty half percentage point, the central bank's first and biggest rate cut since March 2020.
“Job openings had a big gain, and while these numbers are volatile, it’s likely employers see falling interest rates spurring the economy and may want to staff up,'' said Robert Frick, economist with the Navy Federal Credit Union.
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4 Comments
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Peter Neil
absolute nonsense. if there are so many jobs, why can’t people get them?
because companies post non-existent jobs to make it look like they’re expanding to keep the stock price up and get loans.
companies also use it to survey the market for salaries and try to find competitive information from laid off workers from other companies.
stanford graduates in computer science with a 4.0 gpa can only get jobs working at the mall. if they’re lucky. 1,000 resumes, 10 interviews and no job.
theFu
Companies want people with high skill levels, but aren't willing to pay "the going rate" for those people, so they leave openings on their books as a way to prove to the Govt that more highly skilled immigrants, who are willing to work for 40% less, should be allowed into the US.
From what I've seen, nearly all of those "highly skilled" immigrants came from just a few countries where the recruiters are willing to lie on resumes to get interviews with HR. If the manager they will be working for is desperate, she won't have time to verify skills claimed and will just hire the person.
At my last consulting job at a Fortune 10 company, I saw this over and over. The people hired didn't have the skills their resume claimed, but they'd already been hired, so it would take 6 months to let their contract expire if they were totally incompetent. Being totally incompetent is hard in corporate America. If you are pleasant and aren't a total idiot, you'll probably get shifted into some other position - you became a known quantity.
Even if the immigrant only had 30% of the required skills, they'd stay, because they were cheaper than a US person with 80% of the listed skills. OTOH, if a US person didn't have 100% of the listed skills the company wanted on their resume, they wouldn't be invited for an interview. That's how the foreign recruitment agencies play the game. If someone at the company, complains, they have 20 more bodies with resumes that claim to be a perfect fit (though none of them are).
For US residents, they know their reputation matters, so lying on their resume isn't normal.
Anyway, I haven't actually applied for a job since 1999. All my jobs since then were word of mouth. Once I was in a training class and an old boss happened to walk by the room and saw me. He immediately offered me a job though we hadn't seen each other in about 8 yrs. Reputation matters and in my field, the qualified people are a fairly small group. If I don't already know the guy, I know someone he's worked with before.
Of course, unskilled workers are a completely different issue. Now is the time they all need to line of for Xmas seasonal work and hope to make a good impression so they aren't fired December 30th.
theFu
Getting a job isn't hard. Getting a job in a location you want is.
The Stanford people need to be willing to be employed in Omaha or Kansas City or Memphis or Biloxi or Dayton, not just somewhere on the west coast.
TokyoLiving
Poor wages for immigration..