{"id":833749,"date":"2026-09-02T04:26:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T04:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/833749\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T04:26:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T04:26:19","slug":"the-labor-market-was-largely-stagnant-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/833749\/","title":{"rendered":"The labor market was largely stagnant July"},"content":{"rendered":"

The number of job openings in the U.S. didn\u2019t change a whole lot last month, according to the fresh Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey<\/a> from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The JOLTS data also showed that while people are still mostly skittish about quitting their jobs, layoffs aren\u2019t up. <\/p>\n

There was even a sliver of good-ish news: For every person out there looking for a job, there are 1.05 jobs available \u2014 at least on paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ratio of job openings relative to unemployed individuals \u2014 that\u2019s a metric of how tight the labor market might be \u2014 actually continues to rise, and it\u2019s at its highest level since January 2025,\u201d said Deutschebank Chief Economist Matt Luzzetti.<\/p>\n

The Federal Reserve could take that as a sign that it can go ahead and raise interest rates, since the job market looks strong enough to withstand an increase. (Remember, the Fed is considering raising rates<\/a> to fight stubborn inflation.)<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the labor market is not a reason to not raise rates at this point in time,\u201d Luzzetti said.<\/p>\n

Markets are saying there\u2019s a 70% chance<\/a> the Fed raises interest rates at its September meeting. <\/p>\n

Still, though the job market may be stable \u2014 the unemployment rate has come down, layoffs are down slightly \u2014 it\u2019s not exactly a great job market.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople aren\u2019t necessarily flipping jobs at this point, probably because wage growth isn\u2019t that great,<\/a> and you know, companies aren\u2019t laying off people, probably because it took them a while maybe to hire some of those people, and they\u2019re not going to be quick to just let them go,\u201d said Michael Kramer, founder of Mott Capital Management. <\/p>\n

Also, the labor market situation varies significantly by industry. If you work in durable goods manufacturing, there were 76,000 new job openings in July to choose from. But if you\u2019re in business and professional services, there were 68,000 fewer of those job postings.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this duality of the labor market is definitely quite striking,\u201d said Sneha Puri, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. \u201cEvery month we kind of see these really stark differences<\/a>, where job seekers in some sectors are experiencing very different realities while they are looking for a job compared to job seekers in other sectors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Puri said whatever this is \u2014 this labor market where jobs are secure if you have them and hard to get if you don\u2019t \u2014 it\u2019s probably the new normal.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of job openings in the U.S. didn\u2019t change a whole lot last month, according to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101,32875,36560,2802,2539,16317],"class_list":["post-833749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-job-openings","tag-jolts","tag-labor-market","tag-layoffs","tag-unemployement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}