The number of job openings in the U.S. labor market fell to 8.8 million in July, a decrease of 338,000 from the month before, according to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As the number of available jobs continues to decline month over month, the ratio of open jobs to job seekers has fallen to 1.5 – meaning there were about one and a half jobs available for every person looking for work in July. That’s the lowest ratio since September 2021, although the measure is still higher than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“While most Americans who want a job have one, it is not as easy to find new work as a year ago,” Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank, wrote in a note, per Axios. “Hires and quits are back to their pre-pandemic levels, and job openings are falling rapidly.” The quits rate, which gives economists a sense of how confident workers are about finding better jobs, fell to 2.3% in July, about where it was before the pandemic.
While that may be less than stellar news for job seekers, officials at the Federal Reserve worried about the effect of tight labor conditions on inflation will likely see the latest report in a more positive light. “This is a really good sign for a cooling labor market, but it’s not a cool labor market yet,” Layla O’Kane, a senior economist at Lightcast, told The New York Times. “There’s some way to go before we think we solved some of the labor market tightness.”