Anyone wondering whether the U.S. job market is still strong may have gotten their answer this week.
U.S. job openings barely moved in February and remain historically high. The Labor Department said Tuesday employers posted 8.76 million job vacancies in February.
That’s a modest increase from January, and about what economists had forecast, the Associated Press reported.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed that layoffs ticked up to 1.7 million in February from 1.6 million in January, the AP said. That’s the highest since March 2023.
The number of Americans quitting their jobs – a sign of confidence they can find better pay or working conditions elsewhere – rose modestly to 3.5 million.
Monthly job openings are down from a peak of 12.2 million in March 2022 but are still at a high level. Before 2021, they’d never topped 8 million.
Although the unemployment rate rose to 3.9% in February, it’s come in below 4% for 25 straight months, longest such streak since the 1960s.
At the same time, the higher rates have brought inflation down. In February, consumer prices were up 3.2% from a year earlier — down from a four-decade high year-over-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022, according to the AP.
The combination of easing inflation and sturdy job growth has raised hopes the Fed is cooling inflation without causing a recession. The Fed stopped raising rates last July and has signaled that it plans to reverse course and cut rates three times in 2024.
“Job openings are still elevated relative to pre-pandemic readings, signaling still-strong demand for workers,’’ Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, told the AP. “A strong labor market backdrop coupled with inflation receding but remaining above target supports the (Fed’s) current patient stance on future policy decisions.’’
Compared to layoffs, the steady drop in job openings is a painless way to cool a labor market that has been red hot, easing upward pressure on wages that can lead to higher prices.
Hiring likely remained healthy last month. The AP reported that economists expect the March jobs report to show that employers added nearly 193,000 jobs and that the unemployment dipped to 3.8%, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.
