OAN Staff James Meyers
9:08 AM – Thursday, September 5, 2024
Job openings across America spiraled down to their lowest level since the beginning of 2021, a very concerning notion that the labor market is cooling.
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The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report released Wednesday found there were 7.6 million job openings in July, which is the lowest level since January 2021 and less than the 8.1 million openings that were expected by economists polled by LSEG.
Additionally, the report also revised down the number of job openings in June by 274,000 to 7.9 million, and the number of people hired was down by 93,000 to 5.2 million for that month.
Layoffs increased as well in June, with the new number up by 62,000 to 1.6 million.
The latest information signals the labor market is continually slowing down, increasing the likelihood and size of a widely anticipated rate cut by the Federal Reserve this month.
“The JOLTS report ends up being another negative surprise regarding the state of the U.S. economy,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate. “This reinforces the current narrative of job market softening, including slower hiring and a rising unemployment rate.”
Meanwhile, recent employment and jobs data have raised the fear that the Fed kept interest rates too high for too long, which is a scenario that could result in lost jobs and falling economic output.
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