Advertised job openings declined from recent record-high levels in June, the Department of Labor reported Wednesday.
Hiring, however, picked up and other indicators suggested a strengthening U.S. jobs outlook.
Job openings fell to 5.2 million in June, down from a record 5.4 million in May, according to the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Advertised vacancies in May and April had been at the highest levels since the the Labor Department started keeping track in late 2000.
The gross jobs numbers released Wednesday lag the more closely-watched nonfarm payrolls jobs numbers by a month. Nevertheless, they’re closely watched by the economists in the government and on Wall Street for details that can provide extra hints about jobs trends.
One such statistic is total hires. At 5.2 million in June, hiring has risen over the year. While hiring remains well shy of the 5.8 million record set in 2000, it’s closing in on prerecession levels. The hiring rate, which captures hires as a share of total employment, ticked up from 3.6 percent to 3.7 percent. The construction industry has seen especially strong growth over the course of the past year.
The quits rate held at 1.9 percent in June, the rate it’s been for most of 2015. The long-term average is around 2.1 percent. Rising quits are viewed as a sign of labor market strength, as they indicate that workers are comfortable leaving their jobs to test the market. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen has cited quits as a metric she follows in making decisions about monetary policy.
Wednesday’s report, along with all other major government economic statistics releases, was highly anticipated by investors trying to guess whether Yellen and other Fed officials have seen enough economic improvement to riase interest rates at their September meeting.
Overall, the report marked significant progress over the course of the recovery from the financial crisis.
In June, there were just under 1.6 workers for each advertised job opening. That was the lowest ratio to date of the recovery, down from a ratio of just over 1.6 the month before. There were nearly seven workers for each opening in the depths of the recession in 2009.
