What the JOLTS Report tells us about the economy

Yahoo Finance Live anchors Julie Hyman and Brad Smith break down the latest JOLTS reading, how April job openings beat on expectations, and what it all means ahead of Friday's jobs report.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: We got the JOLTS data coming on through as we have been talking about, and it's coming out hot folks. $10.1 million job openings in the month of April. 9.4 million is what economists had been estimating. And it's an uptick from the prior month, about 9.59 million. Actually, there's even an upward revision in the prior month to 9.74. So I call it 7 5 million jobs. So the job market is still hot. If you're looking at this particular number now, I'll have to go into the release to see what kind of color we get from it, and I know you already got it open there, Brad. But overall, just to say again, $10.1 million is the headline number here, which is considerably higher than expected.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah. In April, job openings increased in retail trade the most by 209,000. Health care and social assistance also doing their part. 185,000 jobs added there. Plus, transportation, warehousing, and utility is also rounding out some of the largest gains by sector, at least at 154,000 there. The number of hires-- interesting. That was a little change. 6.1 million there, and the rate held at about 3.9% hires actually decreased in information by about 37,000 jobs there. And then, just lastly, here as well, total number of separations that decreased to 5.7 million. So that was down by about 286,000 during the month of April.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. So interesting here. The number of quits increasing in wholesale trade. You talked about that-- maybe, that's one of the areas of strength here. Quit rate decreasing in state and local government excluding education. And we know there has been some more weakness in government hiring. So does this presage what we'll see on Friday and the jobs report no because it's not-- well, not necessarily, right? Because these numbers aren't an exact--

BRAD SMITH: Sure.

JULIE HYMAN: But you know, what we heard from Yelena Shulyatyeva just a little while ago from BNP Paribas, 250,000 if the job additions last month are above that number that is going to put more pressure on the Fed to act. These numbers maybe do point a little bit more in that direction.

BRAD SMITH: And that kind of mirrors what Citi had said as well. They were looking for upwards of $200,000 to really initiates that have no choice but to continue in their policy pathway at the Fed, if we did see more than 200,000 jobs come in that as we were discussing just yesterday. And so, we'll see exactly where that employment data comes through and the employment situation at the end of this week.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, I just want to take a look at stocks if we could here. Because I want to see if we've seen any kind of reaction. It looks like that we did see things take a bit of a lag down. Do we have any intraday charts folks, so we can look at that movement on, or even a two-day chart for the major averages? Because it looks like we did see a little bit of a lag lower as we got these numbers coming out again, because does this then put-- maybe solidify the idea that the Fed would indeed be raising rates.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah. It seems like some of the move lower really initiated around 9:45 AM. So a little before this data came out, but continuing to see exactly where at least in the Dow and some of the other US major averages where there could be even more reaction to this figure, as it now gives even more inclination to how the Fed is still, of course, looking at and digesting some of the, yes, albeit lagging data, but some of the best economic data that they can continue to look at over their policy pathway.