US Jobs Openings Increased in June

U.S. job openings increased in June and layoffs dropped to their lowest in nearly two years as labor market conditions tightened further, according a government report on Wednesday.

The Labor Department’s monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report also suggested a growing skill shortage, which has been highlighted by independent surveys.

“This report continues to point to a tight labor market. It is clear that demand for labor is not the problem and there is nothing monetary policy can do to address a mismatch between the needs of employers and the skills of job seekers,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.

Job openings, a measure of labor demand, rose 110,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.6 million, the JOLTS report showed. That raised the jobs openings rate one-tenth of a percentage point to 3.8 percent.

The JOLTS report is one of the job market metrics on Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s so-called dashboard. Fed officials view the labor market as being at or near full employment.

Concerns about persistently low inflation and an uncertain global economic outlook have left the U.S. central bank cautious about raising interest rates in the near term.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza