Job openings fall to pre-pandemic levels as US labor market continues to cool down

In the next four days, a fire hose of data will be unleashed, providing crucial snapshots of the US economy in advance of a pivotal election and a Federal Reserve meeting.

In the next four days, a fire hose of data will be unleashed, providing crucial snapshots of the US economy in advance of a pivotal election and a Federal Reserve meeting. The first burst on Tuesday — a critical read on activity within the jobs market — showed that the once too-tight labor market is starting to look more like its pre-pandemic days. There were an estimated 7.4 million unfilled jobs on the last day of September, a drop from August’s revised tally of 7.86 million openings, according to new data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The largest drop-offs in openings were in industries that have driven much of the job growth in recent years: health care and social assistance, and government, according to the report. “I think the normalization of the labor market has continued to progress,” Eugenio Aleman, chief economist for Raymond James, told CNN. Economists were expecting the number of job openings to land at around 7.9 million, declining from the prior month’s initial estimate of 8.04 million, according to FactSet estimates. The decline in job openings reflects a labor market that has slowed back to a pre-pandemic pace after experiencing years of blockbuster growth: The rate of openings as a percentage of total employment mirrors what was seen throughout much of 2018 and 2019, BLS data shows.