U.S. job openings flat in October at roughly 7.7 million vacancies

U.S. job openings barely budged in October, coming in at 7.7 million with ongoing uncertainty over the direction of the American economy.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that employers posted 7.67 million vacancies in October, close to September’s 7.66 million.

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which was delayed by the extended government shutdown, also showed that the layoffs rose to almost 1.9 million, most since January, 2023. And the number of people quitting their jobs – a sign of confidence in the labour market – fell in October, suggesting that “businesses seeking to control labour costs will have to pivot to active layoffs, lifting unemployment, rather than rely on natural attrition,” Samuel Tombs, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon, wrote in a commentary.

Canada’s jobless rate falls to 6.5% driven by rise in part-time, youth employment

Job openings have come down steadily since peaking at a record 12.1 million in March, 2022, when the economy was roaring back from COVID-19 lockdowns. The job market has cooled partly because of the lingering effect of the high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in 2022 and 2023 to combat an outburst of inflation.

Overall, it’s a puzzling time for the American economy, buffeted by President Donald Trump’s decision to reverse decades of U.S. policy in favour of free trade and instead impose double-digit tariffs on imports from most of the world’s countries.

Policy-makers at the Federal Reserve are meeting this week to decide whether to cut their benchmark interest rate, and the gathering is expected to be unusually contentious. Inflation remains stuck above the Fed’s 2-per-cent target, partly because importers have tried to pass along the cost of Trump’s tariffs by raising prices. Normally, stubborn inflation would discourage Fed policy-makers from cutting rates. But the job market has looked shaky in recent months, and the Fed is expected to reduce its benchmark rate for the third time this year, though some policy-makers might dissent.

Meanwhile, the 43-day federal shutdown has made a mess of the government’s economic statistics.

Canada’s jobless rate falls to 6.5% driven by rise in part-time, youth employment

The October report on job openings came out a week late, and the September version was not published separately because federal data collectors were on furlough. Instead, September’s JOLTS numbers were folded into Tuesday’s report along with October’s. They showed a hefty increase in openings from 7.23 million in August.

The Labor Department will issue numbers for hiring and unemployment for November next Tuesday, 11 days later than originally scheduled. The department is not releasing an unemployment rate for October because it could not calculate the number during the shutdown. It will release some of the October jobs data – including the number of positions that employers created that month – along with the full November jobs report.

Forecasters surveyed by the data firm FactSet predict that employers added fewer than 38,000 jobs in November and that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.5 per cent from September’s 4.4 per cent. That would be low by historical standards, but the highest in nearly four years.