The number of job openings in the United States surprisingly crept back up in September, signaling that the labor market remains hotter than anticipated despite the Fed’s aggressive efforts to cool it. At the same time, the number of unemployed persons decreased by a quarter of a million people, bringing it within a hair of its February 2020 (i.e. pre-Covid) low of 5.7 million.
With more than 10.7 million job openings and 5.7 million unemployed, there’s almost 1.9 unfilled positions for every job seeker, indicating that the imbalance between labor demand and supply persists. The latest reading has once again reduced the chances of the Fed pivoting towards a less aggressive stance in face of inflation. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly stressed that the labor market needs to come off the boil to relieve upward pressure on wages and thus cool inflation, a goal that has proven elusive so far.
This chart shows the number of unemployed persons and job openings in the United States.
