Catenaa, Tuesday, June 02, 2026- US job openings jumped in April as the labor market looked resilient despite economic uncertainty caused by the Iran war.
US employers posted 7.6 million job vacancies in April, the Labor Department reported Tuesday, up from 6.9 million in March and the most since May 2024. Economists had forecast just 6.8 million openings.
Layoffs fell, but so did the number of Americans quitting their jobs – a sign of confidence in their prospects.
The American job market has been recovering from a dismal 2025. Last year, companies, nonprofits, and government agencies added fewer than 10,000 jobs a month, the least outside a recession since 2002.
This year has been better; job growth averaged 76,000 a month from January through April. Big tax refunds, the product of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cut bill last year, have given the economy a lift this year, offsetting the impact of sharply higher energy prices since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.
But the refunds have mostly been paid out and are fading as an economic booster.
The United States also doesn’t need as many new jobs as it used to. Trump’s immigration crackdown and Baby Boomer retirements mean that fewer people are competing for work.
As a result, the so-called break-even point, the number of new jobs needed every month to keep the unemployment rate stable, has dropped to near zero from 155,000 a month two or three years ago, according to an April report by Federal Reserve economists Seth Murray and Ivan Vidangos.
The report also showed the number of vacancies per unemployed worker, a ratio Fed officials watch closely as a proxy for the balance between labor demand and supply, was little changed at 1 to 1. At its peak in 2022, the ratio was 2 to 1.
Recent jobless claims data have shown few signs of widespread layoffs despite some high-profile announcements of job cuts, including from the likes of Meta Platforms, Starbucks, LinkedIn and Walmart.
The government’s monthly jobs report for May is due Friday, and economists expect it to show an 85,000 increase in payrolls, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.
A separate index by job-posting site Indeed has changed little since the end of March.
