Job Openings Top 11.2 Million in July, Well Above Estimate

• Available job positions in July totaled 11.24 million for the month, well in excess of the 10.3 million FactSet estimate.
• That total also was nearly double the total pool of available workers, which stood at 5.67 million for the month.

There were nearly 1 million more job openings than expected in July, an inflationary sign that the U.S. labor market is still extremely tight, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.

Available positions totaled 11.24 million for the month, well in excess of the 10.3 million FactSet estimate, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The total was about 200,000 higher than the 11.04 million in June, a number revised up from the initially reported 10.7 million.

The July numbers reinforced that there is still a considerable shortage of workers for available positions, with openings outnumbering available workers by just shy of a 2-to-1 margin. That, in turn, is inflationary as employers are forced to offer higher compensation to attract workers at a time when prices are rising near their fastest pace in more than 40 years.