By james art U.S. job openings fell last month to their lowest level since January 2021, a sign that the labor market is losing some momentum. Still, posted vacancies remain well above pre-pandemic levels.
The Labor Department reported on Tuesday that the number of job openings fell to 7.4 million in September from 7.9 million in August. Economists had expected the vacancy rate to remain largely unchanged. Vacancies declined particularly at health care companies and at federal, state and local government agencies.
The number of redundancies also increased. And the number of Americans who quit their jobs fell below 3.1 million, the fewest since August 2020.
“Workers [are] are not as confident as they were that they will be able to find a job if they leave without someone else stepping in,” Karl Weinberg and Rubila Faruqi of High Frequency Economics wrote in a commentary. Still, they added, “there’s no signal here of any sudden collapse in the labor market here or an impending recession. The labor market is softer, of course, but it’s not falling apart.
Although job openings have fallen sharply since their peak of 12.2 million in 2022, they remain higher than they were before the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed the U.S. economy in early 2020. When the economy bounced back with unexpected strength from the COVID-19 recession, companies have struggled to find enough workers to handle customer orders.
The overheating economy sparked a burst of inflation, and the Federal Reserve responded by raising its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. Inflation fell from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 2.4%.
The economy has proved surprisingly resilient amid the Fed’s hikes, avoiding a widely predicted recession. Compared to hiring growth from 2021 to 2023, however, job creation slowed this year to an average of 200,000 new jobs per month from January to September this year. That’s healthy, though less than the record average of 604,000 jobs per month in 2021 at the end of pandemic lockdowns, 377,000 in 2022 and 251,000 last year.
Still, employers added an unexpectedly strong 254,000 jobs in September. On Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report that the economy added 120,000 jobs in October, a total likely to be held back by the effects of hurricanes Helena and Milton and a strike at Boeing. The unemployment rate is expected to remain low at 4.1 percent, according to a survey of forecasters by data firm FactSet.