WASHINGTON — Company job openings fell for the second straight month in June, a sign that hiring isn’t likely to pick up in the coming months.
The data come after a weak employment report Friday showed businesses aren’t adding enough new workers to bring down the unemployment rate, currently 9.5 percent.
Wednesday’s report, known as the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, suggests that won’t change any time soon.
The survey counts job openings on the last day of the month.
Those openings may take up to three months to fill, economists say.
That means Wednesday’s report provides a rough signal of how many jobs will be created over the next several months.
The Labor Department says job openings at businesses fell to 2.54 million in June from 2.6 million in May. Overall openings were unchanged, at 2.9 million, as government openings ticked up. The government figures have been distorted in recent months by the ending of temporary census jobs.
June’s total openings are 26 percent above the low point of 2.3 million in July 2009. That may seem like a lot of available jobs, but they are still far below pre- recession levels of about 4.4 million openings per month.
The report illustrates the level of churn in the job market. About 4.25 million people found jobs in June, the report showed, while 4.35 million lost them. That’s a net loss of about 100,000 jobs.
The report suggests slow hiring is the biggest hurdle facing the workforce. Layoffs by private companies fell to just below 1.7 million, similar to the pace before the recession. Private-sector layoffs rose to a peak of 2.5 million in January 2009.
“It is disappointing that one year into the recovery, the number of private job openings is still lower than that reported during the 2001 recession,” Henry Mo, an economist at Credit Suisse, wrote in a note to clients.
