Job openings plunge to lowest level since Biden sworn in – Washington Examiner

July job openings fell to 7.67 million, a decline of over 1 million jobs from a year ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in an update to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. That is the lowest level since January 2021, the month President Joe Biden entered office.

Most economists had expected that job openings would rise to about 8.09 million.

Job openings have trended down in the past few years, a sign that the jobs market is beginning to soften under the weight of the Fed’s rate hikes.

“Half a million job openings evaporated overnight,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FWDBONDS. “Many of these openings are not real, of course, and serve as window dressing and keep a company’s name out there in the public eye, but still, the loss of half a million jobs in one month is something that is starting to look recessionary. The labor market may be less stable than Fed officials believe.”

About 3.3 million workers quit their jobs in July, little changed from the month before, although down 338,000 from the year before. The figure is equivalent to about 2.1% of the workforce.

The “quits rate” measures the share of people who voluntarily left their jobs. It includes those who left their previous employment for another job and people who quit but are confident they will soon find new employment.

Also of note in Wednesday’s JOLTS report, layoffs and discharges were little changed, at 1.8 million in July.

For context, monthly job openings peaked at over 12 million in March 2022, the first month the Fed hiked interest rates, so the most recent numbers mark a 37% decline from that time.

Recent employment and jobs data have raised the fear that the Fed kept interest rates too high for too long — a scenario that could result in lost jobs and falling economic output.

The economy added 114,000 jobs in July, a slowdown from previous months, and the unemployment rate rose two-tenths of a percentage point to 4.3%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

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Still, GDP has stayed resilient.

In fact, the Bureau of Economic Analysis recently reported that GDP growth in the second quarter was revised up by 0.2 percentage points to a strong 3% seasonally adjusted annual rate.