U.S. Job Openings Slipped in Early December
The number of job openings in the U.S. edged down slightly in the first week of December, a sign of a softening labor market amid an upsurge in coronavirus infections and ebbing fiscal support for households.
There were an average of 10.7 million job openings posted each day on online sites across the U.S. this month, down slightly from November’s 10.9 million, according to data from job-search site ZipRecruiter shared with The Wall Street Journal.
The figures are the latest signs that the economic recovery under way since the spring is cooling. Job growth slowed markedly in November from the month before, the Labor Department reported Friday. Employers added 245,000 jobs last month, down from 610,000 in October, the Labor Department said.
One measure of hiring—the share of LinkedIn members who added a new employer to their profiles, indexed to the monthly average in 2015-2016—rose 0.8% in November, compared with October. The index jumped 18.1% from September to October.
“I’m worried about a temporary stall or backslide as we move into December and January,” said
Guy Berger,
LinkedIn’s principal economist. He cited a “triple whammy” of factors weighing on the labor market: fading fiscal support for households, spiraling coronavirus cases, and new restrictions on business and households to control the spread of infection.
“It’s really a question of how much businesses are feeling a crunch and adjusting head count versus ‘I see a light at the end of the tunnel so I’m willing to keep the hiring pipeline open even in these tough winter months,’” said Mr. Berger.
The U.S. seven-day moving average of new Covid-19 cases surpassed 200,000 on Monday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins data—three times the rate at the peak of the summer surge. More than 100,000 people were hospitalized with the disease as of Monday, according to the Covid Tracking Project, surpassing the peaks of previous surges in April and July. The country is now averaging 2,200 deaths a day, close to the peak reached in the pandemic’s early months.
“How disruptive this latest surge is—that’s hard to say exactly, but clearly it’s going to be,” said
Josh Wright,
chief economist at Wrightside Advisors, noting that companies in many industries have learned to operate with minimal in-person interaction since the spring. “But we’ve seen a preview of this, we know which direction it points in and we know it’s not the right one.”
Hiring for lower-wage jobs, such as those in restaurants, is likely to be more vulnerable than higher-wage work to a drop in activity driven by the virus and related business restrictions, said Mr. Wright.
Some service providers are seeing increased demand. For example, there were 2.5 times more ads for jobs in warehousing and at the U.S. Postal Service in early December, compared with February, according to ZipRecruiter data. Home child care positions were up more than twofold versus February.
The Labor Department reported Wednesday that there were a seasonally adjusted 6.7 million available jobs on the last business day of October. That compared with 6.5 million openings at the end of September, but was down from 7.3 million a year earlier. Hires remained stable at 5.8 million in October, while layoffs and discharges rose to 1.7 million, from 1.4 million in September.
The number of job openings in October was well below the 11.1 million people who were unemployed that month, the department’s data showed.
The report lags behind the more closely watched monthly jobs report and private-sector data by about a month.