Vacancies at US employers unexpectedly increased at the end of 2022, illustrating a solid appetite for labor that the Federal Reserve sees as one of the last hurdles to bring down inflation, Bloomberg News reported. The number of available positions climbed to a five-month high of just over 11 million in December from 10.4 million a month earlier, the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Wednesday. The increase was the largest since July 2021 and mostly reflected a jump in vacancies in accommodation and food services. The openings figure exceeded all economists’ estimates in a Bloomberg survey that had a median projection of 10.3 million. The S&P 500 fell and Treasury yields rose after the report. The figures are consistent with a jobs market where labor demand far outpaces supply and poses a risk of sustained upward pressure on wages that could reignite inflation. That’s likely to be a big talking point of Fed Chair Jerome Powell when he speaks this afternoon at the conclusion of the central bank’s first policy meeting of 2023. Officials are expected to slow the pace of interest-rate hikes to a quarter point.
