Confirmed: America is in a serious jobs slump [View all]

Source: CNN

BUSINESS ECONOMY • 3 MIN READ
Confirmed: America is in a serious jobs slump

UPDATED 3 HR AGO
By Alicia Wallace

Employment gains were so weak in the July jobs report that President Donald Trump fired the head of the bureau charged with collecting the data, baselessly claiming it was rigged. … But fresh figures out Wednesday show that those meager job totals weren’t an anomaly: For the first time in more than four years, there are fewer open jobs than there are job seekers.

“This is a turning point for the labor market,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote Wednesday. “It’s yet another crack.”

The number of job openings was an estimated 7.18 million at the end of July, falling from a downwardly revised 7.36 million the month before, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday.

Job openings are now not only at their lowest level in 10 months, but they’re also below the number of unemployed workers (at 7.2 million) for the first time since April 2021. … Economists were expecting that openings would shrink slightly from June and land at 7.37 million for July, according to FactSet consensus estimates.

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Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/03/economy/us-jolts-job-openings-layoffs-july