Chart of the Week: U.S. labor market – turning a corner?

Last week’s U.S. job openings data was again weaker than expected. Total job openings fell by more in the final two months of last year than in any two-month period since the global financial crisis. How alarmed should we be? In absolute terms, the U.S. labor market remains tight. It is still the case that there are more vacancies in the US economy than there are unemployed people: the vacancy-to-unemployment ratio, a popular measure of labor market tightness, remains above 1. Nevertheless, the turnaround in the vacancies data has been abrupt. It is an indicator worth monitoring as we move further into 2020.

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