LinkUp’s July 2022 JOLTS Forecast

On August 30^th, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will be releasing data pertaining to the number of job openings in the U.S. in July as part of their JOLTS data release. Based on LinkUp’s July job data sourced directly from company websites, we are forecasting that job openings in the U.S. continued to decline last month, dropping 1.5% to 10,540,000.

With everyone’s attention acutely focused on the job market and its impact on inflation, a modest decline in job openings in July is likely to be regarded as a positive sign that the Fed’s tightening is achieving the desired effect of tempering the labor market. If labor demand slowly cools off and labor participation stays level or even increases, the job market will get closer to equilibrium, wage growth might taper off a bit, and the probability of a ‘softish’ landing rises.

Predicting how the markets might respond to July’s job data is anyone’s guess these days, but slowly ebbing labor demand and the avoidance of significant layoffs has to be regarded as positive.