Job openings slow to 10 million in August: JOLTS

Yahoo Finance Live’s Julie Hyman breaks down August JOLTS report data.

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

JULIE HYMAN: We are awaiting JOLTS numbers in just a moment here, as we had comments from Mary Daly today that the Fed is succeeding with full employment. We're having job openings that are actually falling here, as I see. It looks like we got, for the month of August, about 10 million job openings. 11 million was what was expected. And 11.2 million was what we saw the prior month.

Now, this is a number that's been watched much more closely since the pandemic, as an indication of, you know, what's going on with the job market. Another indication, another kind of flavor for us of what's happening within jobs. I'm just trying to--

BRIAN SOZZI: Well you know what?

JULIE HYMAN: --refresh the BLS page and get--

BRIAN SOZZI: Me, too.

JULIE HYMAN: --the numbers up.

BRIAN SOZZI: And you know what's interesting, Julie? As you reported that, we're seeing the markets accelerate again. So we got-- we're getting an economic number that is not too hot, kind of fits with what we heard from the ISM yesterday that sent stocks ripping higher. So you know, it's interesting to watch-- interesting to see these market reactions.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, and I got this-- I got the release up now. So we saw a decrease in the number of job openings to 10.1 million. That's as of the last business day of August here. Hires and total separations, little changed at 6.3 million and 6 million. So 6.3 million for hires, 6 million for separations. The quits rate, it looks like little changed at 4.2 million. Layoffs and discharges at 1 and 1/2 million.

So those numbers little change. But perhaps not surprising in this environment that you have fewer jobs being posted, right? You maybe have a combination here of all of the companies that we've been hearing about that are retrenching in various ways, slowing hiring. And also some-- in some cases, perhaps making do with less, even the companies-- you know I think more of small businesses that want those workers.

BRIAN SOZZI: Sure.

JULIE HYMAN: But at a certain point-- they've been doing it for months now without being able to hire the people that they would like to hire. And so at a certain point, you just say, well, the heck with it, I'm not even gonna advertise that job anymore.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, in terms of the decreases in job openings, the largest ones were actually in health care and social assistance. You saw 236,000 jobs that kind of came out of the equation there. You saw other services decreased by 183,000. And then the retail trade and the retail sector, you saw that come down by about 143,000.

So this also just kind of goes to highlight to your point, Julie, some of the pivot that employers are also having to make right now, even in some of the positions that they perhaps either were looking to backfill for or just add on new members to the team to try and meet some of the demand that they may have been seeing.

BRIAN SOZZI: We just had the Dow almost hit up 800 points after this report. Gained, I would say, close to 100 points since the JOLTS data hit. This is a market, I would argue, that is craving bad news or news that suggests the economy is slowing down because of what the Federal Reserve is doing, which sets the table for bad news is good news for the markets. We hate saying these things, but this is what the market is telling us at this point.