The scramble by employers to find workers continued amid a historically tight labor market in January, as employers reported 11.3 million job openings for the month, according to government data released on Wednesday.
That would have been the highest on record, except that December’s figure was revised higher to 11.4 million.
Those levels could ease, though, as soaring oil prices and potential interest rate hikes this year slow demand for workers. But we do not expect that the pullback will be too significant as the economy continues its strong recovery and the omicron surge eases.
We expect a more balanced labor market this year as workers continue to come off the sidelines, and for more foreign workers to be added to the supply of labor when all travel restrictions are lifted
The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised all of last year’s job openings data to incorporate the annual updates to the jobs report and seasonal factors. Those revisions showed that the demand for labor was even stronger than what the markets have perceived, the BLS reported.
As a result, January showed a modest improvement in the labor shortages compared to December, besides the job openings number.
The number of openings per unemployed worker dropped for the first time since August to 1.73 from 1.81 in December, another record high.
Omicron made a significant impact as most of the decline came from accommodation and food services, which was down 288,000 openings in January.
There was little change to new job hires and separations on the month. The closely watched figure for people quitting their jobs slowed down in January to 2.8% from two back-to-back months at 3%. Finance and insurance registered the largest increase in job quits in January, with 30,000.
On the firm-size level, job quits declined in most categories except for medium-sized firms with 50 to 249 employees, which had 10,000 new job quits on the month.
Looking at the six-month average, we continue to see job quits remain elevated at small and midsize firms. Larger firms that have more than 1,000 employees have had their job quits mostly under control because they have most likely been the destinations for workers leaving other jobs.
