There Are More than 11 Million Job Openings

The stock market is flat to down slightly this morning, but energy is down big. The S&P 500 Energy Index is off by more than 4%.

The price for oil is still under pressure. Yesterday, oil closed below $100 per barrel. Oil is down another $3 today. Outside that, there’s a mild bias towards defensive stocks today.

This morning, we got the JOLTS report which is job openings and labor turnover. According to the government, there were 11.25 million job openings in May. That’s down from 11.68 million for April. That latter figure was revised higher.

The number of job openings still leads unemployment by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio. There are now 5.95 million unemployed. The number of quits fell to 4.27 million. There are 440,000 fewer Americans at work now than there were in February 2020.

Also this morning, the ISM Services Index fell to a two-year low. The reading for June was 55.3. That still signals an expansion, but a weakening one.

At 2 p.m. ET we’ll get the minutes from the last Fed meeting. This is when the Fed decided to hike rates by 0.75%.

Here’s a look at the price for copper. It’s dropped sharply over the last month. Some analysts like to follow copper because it’s historically lined up well with economic expansions and recessions.

Posted by on July 6th, 2022 at 11:23 am


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