Good news for the soft landing crowd: US job openings were “just” 8.827 million on the final business day of July, key data released on Tuesday showed.

That was far fewer than the 9.5 million consensus expected. The headline print constituted a meaningful downside surprise and should bolster the so-called “immaculate disinflation” narrative.

Note that June’s headline was revised sharply lower. Measured against June’s reading as initially reported, openings fell by 755,000 in July. Vacancies are more than 2.4 million lower versus December.

Hires fell modestly in July. The gap between openings and hires was the narrowest since March of 2021.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the August jobs report is accompanied by another very low unemployment rate, those who derided the immaculate disinflation narrative (a group which includes the likes of Larry Summers) will be in an awkward spot.

What we’re currently witnessing in terms of a very large decline in vacancies and no upward movement in the jobless rate has no historical precedent whatsoever. I suppose you could argue that exonerates naysayers (it’s risky to suggest this time is different, after all), but if things keep going like this for another three months or so, you might hear some mea culpas, and not from Fed officials this time.

The openings to unemployed ratio dropped to 1.511, the lowest since September of 2021.

There was good news on the quits front too. 3.549 million people voluntarily separated themselves in July, still high but the fewest since February of 2021, nevertheless. The quit rate fell to 2.3, the lowest since January of that year.

Labor market churn is apparently abating. Churn in the post-pandemic context was indicative of workers’ confidence in the prospects of making more money at a new job. That, in turn, meant fierce competition for workers and hot wage growth.

Fewer quits should be indicative of less upward wage pressure and, closing the loop, decreased risk of a wage-price spiral.

Layoffs, meanwhile, remained very subdued in July, and the rate loitered at 1.0, just a tick from record lows.

There’s no use in dancing around the issue: This was a very favorable report for the Fed. The scope for the JOLTS headline to shoulder the burden of labor market normalization apparently isn’t exhausted, fewer people are quitting and layoffs are virtually nonexistent.

Overall, it was “a very soft look at labor demand as outright job openings continue to slide in response to the increasingly evident lagged impact of higher policy rates,” BMO’s Ben Jeffery remarked, adding that falling quits are “another sign of softer labor demand as workers are less and less willing to resign.”

Read more: The US Labor Market Is Normalizing. Thank Immigrants+