By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- The number of vacancies across the U.S. fell more sharply than expected in June to its lowest level since September, suggesting that the labor market was cooling significantly even before a raft of corporate hiring freezes or slowdowns announced over recent weeks.
The nationwide number of open positions fell to 10.698 million in June from an upwardly revised 11.303 million in May, the Labor Department said on Tuesday in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for June. While that's still a high number in comparison with much of recent history, it's down clearly from a record high of 11.855 million in March and was well short of the 11.00 million expected by analysts ahead of time.
The scale of the decline is all the more surprising in the light of June's employment report, which still showed job growth continuing at a historically high rate.