Staff Reports
In an effort to control inflation, which has been rising at its highest rate in four decades, the Fed has been increasing its target interest rate. According to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, reducing the number of opportunities could help loosen up the labour market without necessarily increasing unemployment by that much.
According to Powell's comments from May, “There’s a path by which we would be able to moderate demand in the labor market and have vacancies go down without having unemployment going up,”
Recent figures indicate that the American economy is not moving in that direction. The number of employees increased by 528,000 in July, while the unemployment rate decreased to 3.5 percent. To 5.67 million, the number of unemployed people decreased in July. As a result, the ratio of open positions to unemployed people is slightly under two to one, almost matching the all-time high set in march.
The number of quits, which has been historically high, remained stable at 4.2 million. Workers are more likely to willingly leave their jobs when they anticipate finding another one quickly or already have an offer, which is another indication that the labour market is still highly tight.
Layoffs and discharges totaled 1.4 million in July, barely changing, while the rate remained constant at 0.9 percent. This is seen as a fairly low incidence of layoffs and demonstrates that firms are retaining staff despite economic slowdowns in some sectors.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Breit Bart.
