At Washington, job openings were at a high during December of 2015 and then Americans voluntarily quit their jobs. It's a positive for the labor market despite the slowing economic growth.
The signs of a robust labor market could ease worries about the health of the economy. Reports of a drop in business confidence was seen in January and it also showed further declines in wholesale inventories.
Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania asks, "If the labor market is tightening, can the economy really be faltering?"
Looking at it in a certain perspective, job openings increase labor demand and right now it's measured at 5.61 million which increased by 261,000. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey indicates that this was the second highest reading since 2001, according to the Labor Department.
The so-called JOLTS report is one of the many resources that is critically watched by the Federal Reserve officials to get a reading on both the labor market and job inflation.
The increase in JOLTS means that job openings are higher at 3.8% from 3.6% during November 2015. The hiring rate shows to be unchanged at 3.7% which means that businesses are having a hard time employing qualified workers for job openings.
What's critical is a total of 3.1 million Americans quit their jobs in December of last year which measures to be the highest quit rate since December 2006. And the Feds look at this as a measure of confidence in the jobs market.
However analytical the JOLTS may be, skeptics are still arguing the about the accuracy of the report, claiming that JOLTS' numbers are backward looking. "Spillovers from tighter financial conditions or the energy slump will curb labor market dynamics in the months to come," Harm Bandholz, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Research in New York, further explains. The analysts are asking now is why is the Fed sitting back and waiting- "why should this happen now when it hasn't over the past several months? After all, oil prices started to fall in mid-2014, and most of the adjustment occurred in the first half of 2015", Bandholz explains while economist Jesse Hurwitz sees the... "Diminishing labor market slack has led to a modest increase in wage growth, evident across several measures of worker compensation."
For now, everyone waits for the U.S. government to publish its second GDP growth estimate later this month.
