The News
The number of US job openings fell to a 3-and-a-half-year low in July, according to a Labor Department survey released Wednesday, in a sign that “the hot job market is over,” The Washington Post’s economic columnist Heather Long wrote.
Openings fell by 237,000 to 7.673 million on July 31, the report said, below economists’ expectations, but job hirings rose from 3.3% in June to 3.5% in July.
Economists said that the labor market wasn’t as tight as its pre-pandemic levels, with traders betting that the US Federal Reserve may be more likely to deliver a bigger rate cut than the widely expected 0.25% at their upcoming September meeting.
“Nobody, and certainly not policymakers at the Federal Reserve, should want the labor market to get any cooler at this point,” an economist told CNBC.