US job openings hit their lowest level in 2 years as hiring cools and workers stay put
Pre-Labor Day digest… Hot off the Labor Department press: US job openings fell from about 9.2M in June to 8.8M in July — the lowest # in over two years. Quit rates (aka the % of Americans who voluntarily left their job) also fell to a two-year low of 2.3%. While Wall Street expected a bigger job-openings drop, new postings have fallen six of the past seven months as more businesses take down their “for hire” signs:
Clocked out: Openings are still above prepandemic levels (and unemployment is near 50-year lows), but fewer than 40% of workers say it would be “easy” to get their dream gig now.
Cash checked: The pace of wage growth and overall compensation (think: benefits) slowed in Q2 this year as worker supply and demand started to rebalance.
One job, three finalists… no corner office. Gone are the days of corporate hiring sprees, where candidates could negotiate fatter paychecks and cushy perks (think: extra PTO). In March there were a record 5M more job openings than unemployed people in the US. Now that number has dropped to 3M. Meanwhile, megacorps like Amazon, Spotify, and T-Mobile are continuing with layoffs — and raising the bar for new recruits. FYI: the time it takes to hire a new employee hit a record of 44 days earlier this year.
Steep falls can lead to soft landings… Fewer job openings and less quitting can help take some of the air out of wage inflation (a big contributor to overall inflation), since companies don’t need to be as competitive on salaries. Fed Chair Powell has said that a cooling labor market and softening wage growth would be key to curbing inflation (and ending rate hikes). We’ll get another pulse on the labor market when the August jobs report comes out Friday.