The Labor Department reported on Tuesday that employers advertised 8 million job openings in August, up from 7.7 million in July. Economists had expected the number of job offers to remain almost unchanged.
Layoffs eased in August. But the number of Americans who quit their jobs, a sign of confidence in the labor market, fell in the same month.
Job offers have declined steadily since peaking at 12.2 million in March 2022, but they still remain above levels before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the American economy in early 2020. As the economy bounces back with an unexpected surge after the COVID-19 shutdown, companies -companies struggle to find enough workers to fulfill customer orders.
An overheated economy caused a spike in inflation, and the Federal Reserve responded by raising its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. Inflation has declined from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 2.5% in August.
The economy proved remarkably resilient in the face of Fed interest rate hikes, avoiding a widely predicted recession. But the labor market is slowly losing momentum. Hiring averaged just 116,000 net jobs per month from June to August, the weakest three-month average since mid-2020.
When the Labor Department releases its jobs report for September on Friday, it is expected to show that employers added 143,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate remained at a low 4.2%, according to a survey of forecasters by data firm FactSet.
The Fed, which is satisfied with the progress against inflation and worried about the decline in the job market. With that, last month, the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point, the central bank's first and biggest rate cut since March 2020.
