Job Openings Surge by 10 Percent to 6.6 Million, Topping Expectations

Construction workers assemble a scaffold at a job site, as phase one of reopening after lockdown begins, during the outbreak of the COVID-19 in New York City, N.Y.,on June 8, 2020. Brendan McDermid/File Photo/Reuters

Job openings in the United States, which are a measure of labor demand, rose by 10 percent to 6.6 million in July, while the number of people quitting their jobs rose by 2.1 percent between June and July, suggesting an uptick in confidence in being able to find work.

The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released Wednesday, showed that the number of job vacancies jumped by 617,000 to 6.6 million on the last day of July, above the 6 million that economists surveyed by FactSet predicted.