By PAUL WISEMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — American employers posted fewer job openings in June because the financial system contends with raging inflation and rising rates of interest.
Job openings fell to a still-high 10.7 million in June from 11.3 million in May, the Labor Department mentioned Tuesday. Job openings, which by no means exceeded 8 million in a month earlier than final 12 months, had topped 11 million each month from December by May earlier than dipping in June.
In its month-to-month Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, the Labor Department mentioned that the variety of Americans quitting their jobs fell barely however remained excessive at 4.2 million in June whereas layoffs fell to 1.3 million from 1.4 million in May.
The job market has been resilient to date this 12 months, and firms have complained that it’s laborious to fill open positions: Employers have added a mean of 457,000 a jobs a month in 2022; and unemployment is close to a 50-year low. That is one motive many economists imagine the financial system isn’t but in an recession despite the fact that gross home product, the broadest measure of financial output, has contracted for 2 quarters in a row — one rule of thumb for the onset of a downturn.
“If the economy is rolling over, the labor market had apparently not gotten the memo yet as of the end of June,” mentioned Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities. “A case could be made for slight moderation from an egregiously overheated state, but that is about as far as I would go in assessing labor market conditions.”
The Labor Department’s jobs report for July, out Friday, is anticipated to indicate that employers tacked on one other 250,000 jobs final month, which might be a wholesome quantity in regular instances however can be the bottom since December 2020, when the worldwide financial system was being ravaged by the pandemic. Economists additionally count on that unemployment stayed at 3.6% for the fifth straight month, in keeping with a survey by the information agency FactSet.
The financial system is underneath strain because the Federal Reserves raises rates of interest to fight inflation that’s operating on the quickest tempo in 4 a long time.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”