This last August US job openings fell by the most in nearly 2.5 years, but demand for labor is still high.
August’s decline was the largest decline since April of 2020, just as the economy began to suffer from the first wave of the pandemic.
This could keep the Federal Reserve on path for its aggressive monetary policy tightening; the Fed is trying to cool demand for labor and the overall economy to bring inflation down to 2%.
Job openings dropped by 1.1 million to 10.1 million on the last day of August, according to the Labor Department’s monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.
July’s data showed over 11.1 million job openings, and economists polled by Reuters had forecast over 10.7 million vacancies.
The U.S. central bank has hiked its policy rate from near zero to the current range of 3.00% to 3.25%, and last month it signaled more large increases were on the way this year, according to Yahoo Finance.
