Job Openings Up 1.7%, Just Shy Of Record

Job openings totaled 7.079 million in November, up 1.7 percent vs 6.96 million in October and just shy of August's record of 7.293 million. The current number of openings is more than 1 million above the number of unemployed who have been actively looking for work, at 6.075 million in a direct comparison with October that since fell to 5.975 million in last week's employment report for November. The number of job openings first broke above the number of unemployed back in April this year and have been inversion ever since. This points to tight conditions in the labor market and, for the Federal Reserve, raises the risk of an upturn in wage inflation.

Hires, which have been lagging openings, did rise 3.4 percent in October but, at 5.892 million, also remain more than 1 million below openings. The risk of increasing scarcity of labor is highlighted by year-on-year rates, at a 16.8 percent increase for openings vs only a 5.2 percent increase in hires. This separation underscores a stubborn feature of the 2018 economy: lack of quality labor, that employers are having a hard time finding the people they want.

One alarm, however, that is not sounding is the number of quits which fell 1.4 percent to 3.514 million from September with the year-on-year rate, at 5.7 percent, only slightly elevated. Federal Reserve officials keep their eye on the number of quits for clues on wage inflation and whether workers are shifting to higher paying jobs.