Job Openings Soar Most In Three Years Just As US Economy Grinds To A Halt

Last month, the market was shocked when despite strong payrolls numbers, the closely-watched JOLTS report – which as a reminder was Janet Yellen’s favorite labor market indicator – showed that in the two months ended Dec 2019, the number of job openings in the US economy tumbled by the most since the crisis, an early warning indicator that something was badly broken in the job market and was likely not captured by the BLS’s Establishment Survey.

Well, moments ago the BLS reported its latest JOLTs report and so often happens, it was a mean reversion kitchen sink, with job openings soaring by 411K, the most in three years…

… and pushing the total back up to 7 million.

Commenting on the data, the BLS said that the number of job openings increased for total private (+370,000) and edged up for government (+40,000). Job openings increased in finance and insurance (+65,000), federal government (+38,000), and mining and logging (+8,000).

The irony of course is that job openings are surging… and nobody cares for two reasons:

• First, the number is two months delayed (this was January data)
• Second, we now know that tens of thousands are being mass laid off at this moment as the US economy shuts down due to the coronavirus, which means that job openings are now completely irrelevant and what matters will be weekly layoffs announcement which soon may be in the millions.

It also means that after 23 months in which there were more job openings that unemployed workers, this series is about to reverse with a vengeance, as posted openings crater and as hundreds of thousands of Americans suddenly find themselves without a job.