US job openings have dropped to their lowest level in three and a half years in July, to 7.67 million, from 7.91 million in June, while available vacancies “materially missed expectations of 8.09 million.”
According to the economics outlet Kobeissi Letter on the microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter), since seeing a peak in March 2022, job opening have “declined by a MASSIVE 4.51 million or 38%,” with the most notable drop being seen in construction openings.
The outlet noted that the ratio of job vacancies to unemployed works fell to 2018 levels, which means that the labor market in the United States “is now weaker than it was before the pandemic.”
The data comes shortly after equities lost over $1 trillion in market capitalization over a single trading session as large-cap tech stocks endured a massive sell-off that saw the price of Nvidia (NVDA), a company that’s been rallying off of AI growth bets, losing over $360 billion in market capitalization including its after-hours move.
Notably, the AI chipmaker beat Wall Street’s consensus for its earnings, which were reported last week. The price of the company’s shares nevertheless started plunging after these revealed its growth is slowing, a drop that has been affecting the wider tech sector.
On top of Nvidia’s slowing growth, two manufacturing activity indicators have shown continued sluggish activity in the sector that has been affected by high interest rates. Later this week, the US August jobs report will be released and could lead to further volatility, as last month a hotter-than-expected unemployment reading led to a stock market drawdown.
Notably, according to Investopedia, September is the only calendar month that, over the last 98 years, has recorded negative returns in the stock market, leading to what’s known as the September Effect, which refers to the market’s underperformance during the month.
CCData has also revealed that the September Effect is also present in the cryptocurrency space, with Bitcoin’s September performance from 2010 to 2023 averaging a negative return of 4.5%.
In those 13 years, the data shows that Bitcoin’s price performance in September was only positive six times. In contrast, April, November and October have seen average returns of 35.6%, 39.2%, and 28.7% respectively.
Featured image via Pixabay.
