In April, the U.S. job openings unexpectedly increased to the highest level in three months, keeping pressure on Federal Reserve policymakers as they try to cool the economy with an aggressive interest-rate hike campaign.
The Labor Department said it had reported 10.1 million job openings in April, an increase from the upwardly revised 9.75 million reported in the previous month. Economists expected a reading of 9.38 million, up from 9.38 million the year before.
From March, it marked a significant increase, with the government reporting an upwardly revised 9.75 million number of jobs.
The agency closely monitors these data as it tries to monitor labor market tightness and wrestle inflation under control. The higher-than-expected figure shows that the demand for workers is still far outpacing the supply of available workers.
The Central Bank has responded to the inflation crisis and the very tight labor market by raising interest rates at the fastest rate in years. officials have so far approved 10 straight rate hikes and have signaled that another increase is on the table at their June meeting, following a slew of surprisingly hot economic data.
The latest jobs data may give policymakers more room to hike again.
Traders are now pricing in a 66.3% chance of a quarter-percentage hike during the Fed's June 13 - 14 meeting - a significant rise from just one day ago, when 36.4% projected another hike, according to the CME Group's FedWatch tool.
Plus, today's job openings number came in much stronger than expected at 10.1 million last month, Loewengart, head of model portfolio construction at Morgan Stanley Global Investment Office, said. Friday's jobs report is just another sign that the labor market is still hot and raises the pressure on the Fed to raise interest rates further this year. Moreover, the percentage of Americans quitting their jobs was mostly unchanged, at 3.8 million, or about 2.4% of the workforce, indicating that workers remain confident they can leave their jobs and find employment elsewhere.
Over the past year, many job-switchers saw their hourly wage increase faster than inflation last year, compared to just 42% of workers who stayed in the same job.