The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS reported 11.3 million job openings as of the last day of May, a decline from April’s revised 11.68M. April was adjusted up from 11.4M openings. This marks the second straight monthly decline. Industries contributing to the decrease include professional and business services (-325,000), durable goods manufacturing (-138,000), and nondurable goods manufacturing (-70,000).  Job openings increased in retail (+104,000), and in hotels and restaurants (+73,000). The number of people who voluntarily left their jobs dipped slightly to 4.27M from 4.32M the previous month. The number of people who quit their jobs for other opportunities made up 2.8% of the workforce in May, down slightly from April’s revised 2.9%.  Quits decreased in real estate and rental and leasing (-33,000) and in state and local government education (-19,000). Quits increased in arts, entertainment, and recreation (+19,000). Layoffs were up slightly to 1.39M after hitting a record low of 1.31M in April. The number of hires was little changed at 6.5M. The hires rate was unchanged at 4.3%. There have been 78.4M hires and 72.0M separations over the past 12 months, resulting in a net employment gain of 6.4M.

The US Energy Information Administration reported that US commercial crude oil stockpiles increased by 8.2M barrels to 423.8M barrels (10% below the five-year average) for the week ending July 1st. Crude oil refinery inputs averaged 16.4M barrels per day, a decrease of 228K barrels per day as compared to the previous week’s average. Gasoline inventories decreased by 2.5M barrels (8% below the five-year average), and distillate inventories decreased by 1.3M barrels (20% below the five-year average). Refineries operated at 94.5% of their operable capacity, as gasoline production increased averaging 10.3M barrels per day. Crude oil imports came in at 6.8M barrels per day, an increase of 0.8M barrels per day as compared to the previous week. Crude oil imports averaged about 6.5M barrels per day over the last four weeks, 0.4% more than the same period last year. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 5.1M barrels last week.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 372,000 jobs were added in June, as the unemployment rate stayed at 3.6% for the fourth month in row, with 5.9M unemployed. February 2020’s pre-pandemic reading was 3.5% with 5.7M unemployed. May’s payrolls were revised down (-6K) to 384K. The June increase in payrolls included notable gains in leisure and hospitality added (+67K), professional and business services (+74K), health care (+57K), transportation and warehousing (+36K), manufacturing (+29K) and information (+25K). Retail trade payrolls were little changed and are still 159K above pre-pandemic levels. Private sector jobs are up (+140K) over February 2020, while government employment is down (-684K). Average hourly earnings increased 0.3% in June. At $32.08 average hourly earnings are up 5.1% from a year ago.  Currently, there are 5.7M unemployed and 11.3M job openings.