In a somewhat disconcerting development for a Fed praying about “immaculate disinflation,” job openings across the US economy surged by nearly 700,000 in August, according to data released on Tuesday.

To briefly recapitulate, the “immaculate disinflation” narrative hinges on the idea that the glut of job openings can absorb any downshift in demand, sparing the economy actual job losses. If job openings don’t normalize (or rise) it means demand is still out of balance with supply, the economy is experiencing an acute matching efficiency problem or both. Either way, it’s a bad omen for inflation.

That’s the context for Tuesday’s 690,000 increase on the headline JOLTS print. Openings on the last business day of August were 9.61 million, above every estimate.

The month-to-month increase was all the more impressive given July’s headline was revised up by 100,000.

Without wanting to make mountains of mole hills, the overshoot to consensus was an unwelcome development. Things were headed in the right direction on this front. “Were,” past tense. Openings fell in six of seven months through July. August’s sizable increase reverses all the progress since May. Hires rose only slightly, meaning the gap ballooned wider.

Notably, openings in leisure and hospitality actually fell. The increase was concentrated in professional and business services, where there are apparently half a million new vacancies (“Are you a professional and/or can you provide services to professionals?” “Umm, I think so.” “Great, you’re hired.”) There were also nearly 100,000 new openings in finance and insurance.

If there was a saving grace in this not-so-immaculate JOLTS update, it was the quit rate, which had the decency to remain unchanged at 2.3%.

Total quits were 3.6 million, basically the same as July. That’s (still) elevated but (still) near the lowest since February of 2021.

A less generous interpretation of the quits figures says quits need to keep falling, not loiter nearly a million above the two-decade average. The openings to unemployed ratio was mostly steady at 1.51.

Ultimately, this only adds to already pervasive concerns that the US labor market isn’t softening consistent with price stability as arbitrarily defined by the Fed. The idea of the bottom falling out for the labor market with 9.6 million open jobs and initial claims struggling to stay above 200,000 seems far-fetched. But NFP will have the final say, I suppose.