The Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish its monthly estimate of jobs openings Tuesday, heading-up a series of key labor market releases this week that come amid a steep surge in Treasury bond yields tied to renewed inflation concerns.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as Jolts, is likely to show that around 8.8 million positions went unfilled over the month of August, down only modestly from the from the 8.83 million recorded in July and extending a run monthly declines that began in March.
The July figure was the lowest since March of 2021 and down from the all-time high of 12.027 million recorded in March of last year.
The so-called quits rate, which tracks workers leaving their jobs voluntarily — often for pay increases in another position — will be a key focus of the report as investors look for evidence that extended wage increases could stock inflation pressures. The July quits rate slipped to 2.3% from 2.4% in June and is down from the 3% peak it hit at the start of last year.
“The past year-and-a-half, however, has seen the quits
rate drop all the way back to the immediate pre-Covid
level,” said Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics.
“Labor demand has softened markedly now that
employment in most sectors has returned to the pre-Covid
level, or more, and Walmart, the biggest private sector
employer in the U.S. recently cut pay for some in-store
new hires,” he added. “This move won’t be replicated everywhere,
but it sends a powerful signal that the labor shortages of
2021-to-22 are mostly a thing of the past.”
The JOLTs report will kick-off a series of job market data releases this week, with ADP’s monthly employment report expected at 8:15 am on Wednesday, weekly jobless claims slated for 8:30 am on Thursday and the crucial September non-farm payrolls report prior to the start of trading on Friday.
Last week, the BLS’s weekly report showed that just 204,000 people filed for new benefit applications for the week ended Sept. 23, compared with the eight-month low 202,000 reported over the prior period. That was the lowest since early January, a figure that stoked inflation concern and, in part, triggered the ongoing risk in Treasury yields.
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