The anticipated US Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report for January 2024, set to be released on 06 March 2024, is expected to surpass the consensus forecasts in both job openings (JOLTS) and non-farm payroll (NFP) figures. Job openings are expected to be between 9.2 to 9.4 million, ahead of the consensus expectation of 8.9 million and above the December 2023 reading of 9.02 million, signaling a buoyant labor market, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s US Active Jobs index, derived from the high frequency company job postings dataset, which has 90+% correlation with JOLTS data and available in near real-time, shows 9% month-on-month growth in Jan-2023, the highest growth rate in three years.

Adarsh Jain, CFA, Director of Financial Markets at GlobalData, comments: “Job openings accelerated in January 2024, growing 9% month-on-month, with almost half the growth being contributed by three key sectors of Retail, Pharma and Technology. While tech-led layoffs continued in January, this has not diminished new job openings in the sector.”

Using high frequency jobs index, GlobalData forecasts NFP for February 2024 to be between 320,000 to 350,000, well above the consensus expectation of 200,000.

Jain concludes: “In February 2024, job postings have slowed from the previous month, but job closures have risen steeply, growing 50% month-on-month, driving GlobalData’s NFP estimate for February above the consensus, as companies have accelerated the filling of open positions.

“The US jobs continued strength will likely temper rate cut expectations. GlobalData thinks the evolution of the jobs signal needs to be monitored closely over the next couple of months to get a better sense of the rate cuts trajectory at the Fed for 2024.”