Jobs

The JOLTS (Job Opening and Labor Turnover) data just came out for December and confirmed our thoughts that this U.S. labour market is still very sluggish. Consider these:

• Job openings fell 139k in December after a 126k decline in November and are now down in four of the past five months.
• New hires fell 30k and this too occurred after a 35k loss in November. Since last May, hires are down almost 400k or 9% and somehow we are supposed to be buying into the view of a major job market turnaround.
• At least firings are declining — as the jobless claims data would indicate. Layoffs fell 16k but since last May have only declined 66k. In other words, the pace of hiring is declining at a rate that exceeds the drop in layoffs by a factor of 6. That is absolutely incredible.

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