Confirmed: America is in a serious jobs slump
Job seekers walk around at the Downtown Central Library in Buffalo
By Alicia Wallace, CNN
(CNN) — Job growth was so weak in July that President Donald Trump fired the head of the bureau charged with collecting employment data, baselessly claiming the data was rigged.
But fresh figures out Wednesday show that those meager job gains weren’t an anomaly: For the first time in more than four years, there are fewer open jobs than there are job seekers.
“This is a turning point for the labor market,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote Wednesday. “It’s yet another crack.”
The number of job openings fell to an estimated 7.18 million at the end of July, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday.
Job openings not only are at their lowest level in 10 months, but they’re also below the number of unemployed workers (at 7.2 million) for the first time since April 2021.
Wednesday’s data is yet another sign that the labor market isn’t just cooling, it’s grown stale: Hiring remained stagnant, workers stayed put and layoffs remained low.
Economists were expecting that openings would shrink slightly from June and land at 7.37 million for July, according to FactSet consensus estimates.
This story is developing and will be updated.
The-CNN-Wire
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