The May job openings report landed at 7.6 million, running past the 7.3 million economists had penciled in and clearing the revised April number too. Bloomberg’s Enda Curran framed the read as a labor market that has stopped bleeding, with Thursday’s nonfarm payrolls now expected to print somewhere north of 100,000 jobs created. Stocks just closed their best quarter in six years on data like this, so the setup matters.
What Curran actually said about the labor picture
Curran’s language on Bloomberg was careful, and worth reading twice. “Job openings came in at around 7,600,000 for the month of May. That’s above the revised figure for April, above the 7,300,000 that economists were expecting,” he noted, with demand steady across construction, health care and leisure. Hiring is “more broad based” now, which is a different claim from saying the labor market is hot.
His frame is that the market “has found its feet after last year, which was the worst year for jobs creation in twenty years.” Found its feet, stabilizing rather than accelerating. The underlying BLS establishment survey backs that up. Total nonfarm payrolls hit 159,001 thousand in May 2026, the highest reading in the last 30 months, after a 2025 that spent the entire year compressed between 158,268 and 158,548. That’s what stall looks like in the data.
Why the stabilization story holds up in the data
Unemployment has parked at 4.3% for three straight months, March through May 2026. That is up from 3.7% in January 2024, but the drift has flattened. The Sahm Rule, which trips a recession signal at 0.50, sat at 0.10 as of May 1, 2026, back to its July 2025 baseline after peaking at 0.43 in November 2025. The stress moment came and went without triggering.
Wages tell a similar story of grinding upward pressure. Average hourly earnings across the private sector hit $37.53 in May 2026, up from $36.28 a year earlier, and every month of 2026 has posted a fresh high. So Thursday’s payrolls report drops into a market where the job count is stabilizing, the openings side is firmer than expected, and wages keep climbing. That last part is what keeps the Fed cautious.
The tax-refund tailwind Curran flagged
Investors keep skipping this part. Retail spending and consumer confidence both edged up in June and beat expectations, which is why the quarter closed strong. But Curran pointed out the awkward footnote. “Some of it was said to be down to the refunds from the annual tax refunds this year… That might fade,” he noted. Layered on top are higher gas prices, headline inflation at a three-year high, and real wage gains getting chewed up by that inflation.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management pegs its base case at a soft landing with roughly 75 basis points of cuts to a 3-3.25% funds rate by year-end 2026, contingent on soft job growth continuing. If Thursday’s number comes in hot enough to look like “stabilization” on Goldman’s scenario grid, that trims to 25 basis points of easing. That is the swing factor for anyone positioning duration or rate-sensitive equities.
How Thursday actually trades
The VIX closed June at 16.45, sitting in the 36th percentile for the trailing 12 months and down 15.6% over the past week. Markets are not heavily hedged for a surprise in either direction. A payrolls beat with hot wages resets the Fed conversation toward fewer cuts. A miss revives the recession chatter that the Sahm Rule just talked everyone out of. Either way, the openings number just raised the bar for what “in line” on Thursday actually means.
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