There were no fireworks from the BLS’s monthly update on job openings across the US economy.
Tuesday’s release showed total vacancies were basically unchanged from the prior month at 7.594 million on the last business day of May. That was ahead of consensus.
Recall that the April’s JOLTS release was a barnburner. Specifically, a wholly anomalous surge in professional and business services sector vacancies drove the headline openings print to its fourth-largest jump in series history.
Professional and business services openings rose again in Tuesday’s release, but only barely. The biggest increase was in leisure and hospitality, where there were apparently 95,000 more open positions versus the prior month.
Hires fell to a three-month low, layoffs ticked up but remained subdued and overall quits were more or less unchanged, as was the quit rate.
If there was anything notable about Tuesday’s release, it was another uptick in the so-called “jobs-to-jobless” ratio which, at 1.039, is the highest since January of 2025.
So, there’s more than one open job for every American counted as officially unemployed.
I’ll recycle some color from my coverage of the last JOLTS release: If you’re Kevin Warsh and you want to cut rates, a jobs-to-jobless ratio >1 doesn’t help.
Bottom line: Downside risks to the US labor market continue to abate, and in case you haven’t noticed, upside risks to inflation have only grown, another Iran shooting truce notwithstanding.
As ever, this comes with the (not insignificant) caveat that faith in the accuracy of the JOLTS report is severely diminished in the 2020s. Hence the skeptical banner image.
Add alito to that jolts report. Justice Pulte?? It’s gonna be interesting to see if trump can get a nominee through ahead of the midterms.
story retracted, initially reported on npr that alito was retiring. apologies.
Yeah, that’s an extremely bad look for NPR and SCOTUS. There’s some panic going on right now in both places.
Also, Trump couldn’t find a better justice for his “cause” than Alito. Ol’ Sam’s as reliable as they come.
He’ll probably wait to make a decision right after the midterm votes are in. If republicans lose the senate, he’ll retire and they’ll fast track a new nominee to lock that seat in for another 30 years and further cement the next generation of plutocracy.
@dayjob: if that scenario doesn’t light a fire under dems to reconfigure SCOTUS, i don’t know what will.