Economists were expecting that the July postings would total 8.1 million, according to FactSet consensus estimates.
Wednesday’s data is the first in a series of critically important economic metrics released this week about the US labor market, culminating with the Friday jobs report. With a hotly anticipated rate cut just two weeks away, Wall Street and Main Street are intently focused on whether a weakening labor market could mean a jumbo-sized cut from the Federal Reserve.
The July Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey report “confirms the picture of the labor market that we’ve been seeing for a little while,” Oliver Allen, senior US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, told CNN in an interview Wednesday. “The labor market was looking very tight in a lot of 2023 and into the start of this year, and now it’s looking much more balanced.”
The worry, however, is whether the scales are tipping in the opposite direction.
“It’s the direction of travel now, which is the more concerning thing,” he said. “As much as the Fed might not want to see more deterioration, the simple fact is they have already raised rates a very long way, left rates at a high level for quite a while, and monetary policy obviously operates at a lag.”
“So, I think some further deterioration is already in the pipeline,” he added.
