Job s🌠eekers, who have enjoyed plentiful options in recent years, saw their choices diminish somewhat in June as the number of job openings ticked down to their lowest since April 2021. 

The number of job openings in the U.S. fell by 34,000 between May and June, leaving openings at a two-year low of 9.6 million, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said Tuesday. More important, the number of job openings for May was revised downward by 200,000 from what the BLS reported last month. Still, there remained 1.6 open jobs for every unemployed worker—down from the peak of 2 jobs reached in March 2022 but well above pre-pandemic levels. 

“The U𒀰.S. labor market has come off the boil, but it’s still simmering,” Nick Bunker, head of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said in a commentary. “Demand for workers— whether new ones or existing ones—remains high, and job seekers are still in the driver’s seat.”

A cooling labor market makes life harder for job seekers who have gotten used to a lot of leverage in the post-pandemic era. But to officials at the Federal Reserve, it could signal that their campaign of anti-inflation interest rate hikes, meant to slow the economy, are having the intended effect. The Fed views wage growth as a source of inflation, especially for services where labor costs are a major contributor to prices, and would like to 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:see workers get smaller raises. 

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey provided several indications thaღt the hot la🧔bor market is cooling. In June, 3.8 million people quit their jobs, down from 4 million in May in a sign that workers may be less confident of finding new employment. 

Furthermore, the number of job openings may overstate how good the labor market is, Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a commentary. That’s because some of those job openings are likely fake. In a 2022 survey by Clarify Capital, employers admitted to posting jobs for reasons including giving the impression that their company was growing, or to placate overworked employees.