Job Openings Surging, Hiring Falling Behind

Job openings are absolutely surging while hiring is falling further behind. Openings jumped 1.7 percent in July to 6.939 million to easily top Econoday's consensus range. Hires, after posting a 1.2 percent decline in June, came in unchanged in July at 5.679 million.

Year-on-year, openings are up 11.9 percent with hirings up only 3.3 percent with this reading now having fallen for three months in a row. The widening gap between openings and hires strongly suggests that employers are having the hard time finding employees with the right qualifications.

The number of openings, for the first time on record, moved past the number of people actively looking for work in March this year. This gap also keeps widening and stood at 659,000 in July and raises the risk of wage pressures as slack disappears in the available workforce.

Another sign of pressure, one watched by Jerome Powell, is the quits rate in this report which, up 1 tenth to 2.4 percent, is on the rise and what points to increasing willingness of those with jobs to look for better work.