Has the red hot job market cooled off?

A little tiny bit?

A little cooler

As summer begins to draw to a close, America’s hot job market is showing signs of cooling, with openings for July dropping to their lowest level in over 2 years according to yesterday’s update from the Labor Department.

There were around 340,000 fewer job openings in comparison to June, as vacancies dipped below 9 million for the first time since March 2021. There’s still plenty of work out there, however: the 8.83 million openings figure from July remains elevated from pre-pandemic levels.

We’re (still) hiring

The narrowing gap between labor supply and demand was enough to see stocks rally, with the S&P 500 enjoying its best single-day performance since May, as more aggressive Fed rate raises are seen as less likely in a cooling labor market. That said, the ratio of job openings to unemployed people sits at ~1.5, still one of the highest readings in the last 20 years.