Tuesday, 11 Aug 2020 08:03 AM MYT
Despite the increase in vacancies reported by the Labour Department yesterday, job openings remained below their pre-pandemic level, supporting the view that it could take the labor market years to recover from the public health crisis. Job openings, a measure of labor demand, rose 518,000 to 5.9 million on the last day of June, the Labour Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS. Vacancies were below their level of 7 million in February.
The quits rate, which under normal circumstance is viewed by policymakers and economists as a measure of job market confidence, increased to 1.9 per cent from 1.6 per cent in May.The JOLTS report followed on the heels of news last Friday that the economy created 1.763 million jobs in July, decelerating from a record 4.791 million in June. The economy has regained 9.3 million of the 22 million jobs lost between February and April. There were 16.3 million unemployed last month, though 31.