US job openings jump in March, JOLT survey shows

A gauge of the labour market closely by the head of the US central bank rose back to near its peak level hit in July 2015.

The Federal Reserve’s Job Opening and Labor Turnover survey revealed the number of available positions Stateside rose from an upwardly revised 5.608m for February to 5.757m in March.

Analysts had been expecting a reading of 5.45m.

“This is especially encouraging in the light of the plunge in the stock market in January and early February, which we thought would depress hiring plans for a time,” Ian Shepherdson, chief US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics said in a research report sent to clients.

However, Shepherdson cautioned that it was not a reliable short-term leading indicator of US payrolls although it did suggest the weakness in the April jobs report was a fluke.

The so-called ‘quit rate’ was steady at 2.1%, up from 1.9% on year back.

“We see little new information here - the quit rate just moves in line with the unemployment rate, over time - but Fed Chair Yellen has argued on several occasions that it is a useful measure of the state of the labor market. Right now, it says that conditions are tight,” Sheperdson quipped.