The good news is, job openings across the world’s largest economy stabilized after falling for consecutive months to the second-fewest since 2020.

Beyond that, Tuesday’s JOLTS update from the BLS added to evidence that the US labor market’s cooling.

Hires, for example, fell a fourth month and were the second-lowest since April of 2020, when the economy was shuttered for the pandemic. The quit rate, at 1.9, matched the lowest since the spring of 2020 and before that, since mid-2015.

The layoffs and discharges series remained subdued, which is nice. But on the whole, the release underscored the idea that the labor market’s in a kind of limbo, characterized by limited hiring and limited firing.

Despite the stabilization on the headline openings tally, the key jobs-to-jobless ratio the Fed monitors to get a read on labor market balance slipped further, as illustrated below.

For context, 0.98 is the lowest on that metric since April of 2021, when the labor market — and the economy more generally — began to overheat.

That’s a function of a higher denominator: The unemployment level in the household survey from the BLS jobs report is up two months in a row and six of the last seven. In simple terms: There’s now less than one open job for every person counted as officially unemployed.

So, on that metric at least, it’s not necessarily true that every jobless American could get a job if they all went looking at once. And it’s certainly not true that every jobless American could get a job they actually want if they all went looking.

Although I’m very reluctant to comment on ongoing government shutdown negotiations given that whatever I might say could be dated or completely irrelevant within hours, I’d be remiss not to note that this could be the last major government macro release for a while, depending on how things play out inside the Beltway.