US job openings unexpectedly rose in April in a fairly broad advance and hiring picked up, indicating demand for workers remains healthy despite heightened economic uncertainty.
Available positions increased to 7.39 million from a revised 7.20 million reading in March, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data published Tuesday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 7.10 million openings.
The advance in openings was driven by private-sector industries such as professional and business services as well as health care and social assistance. Meanwhile, openings in manufacturing and the leisure and hospitality sector fell, and so did postings in state and local education, leading to a decline in overall government openings. Vacancies in federal government, however, rose.
The data can be very choppy, swinging by sometimes as much as 500,000 vacancies in either direction from month to month. Economists see value in looking at the report from an overall trend, which shows openings have mostly stabilized between 7 million and 8 million for the past year.
“Given how much the JOLTS series gyrate up and down from one month to the next, the only way that I will get excited is if there are big moves in the same direction for two months in a row and/or the levels are breaking new ground,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Santander US Capital Markets, said in a note. “None of the key indicators (job openings, quits, and layoffs) ticked either of those boxes in April.”
The rise in job openings, along with steady hiring and low unemployment, support the Federal Reserve’s assertion that the job market is in a good place. However, it’s taking longer for those who are out of a job to find work, and economists expect the labor market to weaken more notably in coming months under the weight of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
So far, that hasn’t shown up in the data yet, supporting the Fed’s posture to keep interest rates steady for now. Policymakers and forecasters will be attune to any softening in the job market in the government’s May jobs report due Friday, which is projected to show a slower pace of job growth and a stable unemployment rate.
What Bloomberg Economics Says...
“Headline job openings surprised to the upside, but details of April’s JOLTS report show somewhat more labor-market weakness. Vacancies declined in discretionary services industries most closely associated with travel, and in manufacturing.
Layoffs increased and the quits rate dropped as workers found it harder to get new jobs. Though policymakers describe the labor market as “solid,” there are important signs of slack that we think will encourage policymakers to maintain a cutting bias.”
— Stuart Paul, economist
Hiring advanced to the highest level in nearly a year, according to the JOLTS report. However, the number of layoffs climbed to the highest since October, and fewer people voluntarily quit their jobs, suggesting people are less confident in their ability to find a new position.
The number of vacancies per unemployed worker, a ratio Fed officials watch closely as a proxy of the balance between labor demand and supply, held at 1.0, in line with pre-pandemic levels. At its peak in 2022, the ratio was 2 to 1.
Some economists have questioned the validity of the JOLTS data, in part due to the survey’s low response rate and heavy revisions. A similar index by job-posting site Indeed, which is reported on a daily basis, showed openings declined in April.
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