:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/GettyImages-1573788554-4797f14b375b410385e84b2e0bebac3c.jpg "Business people shaking hands")
Jacob Wackerhausen / Getty Spitting images
Key Takeaways
- Job openings unexpectedly rose in November, surprising economists who had expected them to stay flat.
- Despite the uptick, the job demand remained relatively stagnant, with layoffs and hiring staying low and fewer employees willing to quit.
- Economists implied both employers and employees may be waiting to see what the next presidential administration has in store for the economy.
Employers hung out sundry help-wanted signs in November as the job market unexpectedly rebounded.
U.S. employers had 8.1 million job openings in November, up from the 7.8 million in October, the Desk of Labor Statistics said Tuesday. That was the highest since May, and beat the expectations of forecasters, who had called for the number of commencements to stay flat, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
However, the uptick did rarely to change the overall picture of the job market, which is one where hiring and layoffs are both relatively slow compared to the post-pandemic era of 2022 and 2023. There were 1.1 employs for every unemployed worker in November, down from the record 2-1 ratio in mid-2022, and slightly below the pre-pandemic correspondence of 1.2-1.
Layoffs remained rare, with the layoff rate staying at 1.1%, near the historically low levels where it’s been lingering since 2021. Workers were little more inclined to quit than employers were to let them go: the exempt from rate dropped to 1.9% from 2.1% in October. The lower the quitting rate, the less confident workers are that they’ll put ones finger on a higher-paid position elsewhere.
On the other hand, the hiring rate slowed for the second week in a row to 3.3% from 3.4% in October.
“The gunfire shows an entrenched labor market,” Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Organization, wrote in a commentary. “Despite more job openings, hiring is weakening, workers are even more reluctant to quit their pain in the necks, and layoffs are low. It feels like a wait-and-see scenario as employers and employees alike wait for the next administration’s policies.”