US job openings fall to 7.6 million in December, suggesting the job market is slowing but healthy

U.S. job openings fell in December, a sign that the labor market is cooling but still healthy.

Openings fell to 7.6 million, from 8.2 million in November, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. They were down from 8.9 million a year earlier and a peak of 12.2 million in March 2022 when the economy was rebounding from COVID-19 lockdowns. The openings fell short of the 7.9 million that economists had expected.

The number of layoffs fell, suggesting that Americans enjoy unusual job security. The number of people quitting their jobs rose modestly but stayed below pre-pandemic levels. After surging in 2021 and 2022, quits have come down as workers lose confidence in their ability to find better pay or working conditions elsewhere.

The Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) showed professional and businesses services companies – a broad category that includes managers and technical workers — scaled back their job postings. Openings also fell in healthcare and social assistance and finance and insurance but ticked higher in arts, entertainment and recreation.

The American labor market has slowed from the frenzied hiring of 2021-2023. Employers added 186,000 jobs a month in 2024 through November, not bad but down from 251,000 in 2023, 377,000 in 2022 and a record 604,000 in 2021. When the Labor Department releases its jobs report for January on Friday, it's expected to show that hiring slowed to 160,000 from 256,000, consistent with a healthy but unspectacular job market. Unemployment is expected to stay at a low 4.1%.

Hiring has remained solid despite high interest rates. In 2022 and 2023, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times in an effort to tame inflation. Price pressures have eased considerably, allowing the Fed to reverse course and cut the rate three times in 2024. But the progress on inflation has stalled in recent months and year-over-year increases in consumer prices remain above the central bank's 2% target.

President Donald Trump's plans to tax imports and deport immigrant working in the United States illegally also threaten to rekindle inflation. The Fed has responded with caution, signaling that it expects to cut rates twice this year, down from the four cuts it had projected in September.

''The December JOLTS report is consistent with the Fed's view that the labor market is healthy enough to tolerate a more cautious approach to lowering rates, particularly given the uncertainty surrounding tariff policy, said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. She added that the report "painted a familiar picture of the labor market, with a low pace of layoffs keeping net job growth positive despite a slow pace of hiring.''