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U.S. employers posted 7.7 million vacancies in January, the
Labor Department reported Tuesday, up from 7.5 million. The
outlook for the labor market is murky as Trump wages a trade war
with foreign countries, purges federal workers and threatens to
deport millions of immigrants.
Layoffs fell slightly in January, and the number of Americans
quitting their jobs rose.
The Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey
showed that openings rose in real estate, healthcare,
manufacturing and construction firms. Federal government
agencies posted 135,000 jobs, down from 138,000 in December. The
fallout from purges of federal workers by billionaire Elon
Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is not expected to
show up in labor market data at least until the February numbers
come out.
“These January data included only the earliest days of
DOGE-inspired layoffs of Federal workers,” Carol Weinberg and
Mary Chen of High Frequency Economics wrote in a commentary.
"There is no evidence of Federal Government layoffs in this
report. That does not mean that layoffs in size in Federal
workers will not be a big feature of the February report,
scheduled for release on April 1.''
Weinberg and Chen said that Tuesday's JOLTS report is unlikely
to sway the Federal Reserve from its cautious approach toward
cutting interest rates this year. The Fed is expected to leave
its benchmark rate alone at its meeting next week. “The (Fed)
will find no cause to rush to cut rates in today’s data,” they
wrote. "The labor market does not need it, at least not yet.''
Openings are down from 8.5 million in January 2024 and a peak of
12.2 million in March 2022 when the economy was roaring back
from COVID-19 lockdowns.
The American labor market has slowed from the frenzied hiring of
2021-2023. Employers added 168,000 jobs a month in 2024, decent
but down from 216,000 in 2023, 380,000 in 2022 and a record
603,000 in 2021.
They created 125,000 new jobs in January and 151,000 in
February. The unemployment rate is a low 4.1%.
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