More Bad News on Jobs Front: Job Openings Decline

The Labor Department has more data out that supports the theory that the very disappointing payrolls data from August will not be remedied in September. The Labor Department showed that its total job openings counted in its statistics for the month of July fell to 3.66 million from 3.72 million in June.

With lower job openings and with a more recent low payrolls figure from August released last week, this does not exactly imply any great sudden jobs growth in September.

The introduction noted, “There were 3.7 million job openings on the last business day of July, little changed from June.”  Unfortunately that statistic quoted is due to a “rounding-up” issue. Job openings likely need to be increasing for any great news to come from the BLS.

Today’s report showed that the hires rate of 3.2% and the separations rate of 3.0% were also little changed in July.  Still, hires fell to 4.229 million in July from 4.284 million in June. The total separations fell to 4.058 million in July from 4.249 million in June.

At least layoffs are not that much different. The Labor Department’s July report said, “The layoffs and discharges rate was little changed in July for total nonfarm and total private and unchanged for government. The layoffs and discharges rate was essentially unchanged in all four regions in July. The number of layoffs and discharges for total nonfarm was 1.6 million in July, down from 2.1 million at the end of the recession in June 2009.”

JON C. OGG