The job market is hot!
The US labor market continues to grow at a blistering pace.
After the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) reported record prints for virtually every notable labor market series for January, followed by a modest slowdown in February, there was another impressive higher across most labor market indicators in March. According to the BLS, after an upward revision to the February job openings from 7.087MM to 7.142MM, in March this number surged by a whopping 346K to 7.488 million, the fourth highest number of job openings on record.
According to the BLS, the number of job openings increased for total private (+363,000) and was little changed for government. Job openings increased in a number of industries, with the largest increases in transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+87,000), construction (+73,000), and real estate and rental and leasing (+57,000). Job openings decreased in federal government (-15,000).
More notably, February was the 13th consecutive month in which there were more job openings then unemployed workers: in fact, considering that according to the payrolls report there were 7.488 MM unemployed workers, there was a record 1.664 million more job openings than unemployed workers, (how accurate, or politically-biased the BLS data is, is another matter entirely).