--- title: "August job openings were 7.079 million, a miss the bureau called little changed" url: "https://etf.net/news/august-job-openings-were-7-079-million-a-miss-the-bureau-called-little-changed-2026-09-29" published_at: "2026-09-29T15:12:55.356Z" updated_at: "2026-09-29T15:12:55.356Z" byline: "ETF.net Research" --- # August job openings were 7.079 million, a miss the bureau called little changed The Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Tuesday, September 29, that August openings were 7.079 million, 146,000 short of the 7.225 million economists had expected. By ETF.net Research. Published Sep 29, 2026. U.S. employers had **7.079 million** job openings at the end of August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday at 10 a.m. Eastern time. The count was 256,000 below July's revised 7.335 million, and 146,000 short of the 7.225 million economists had expected. The bureau called the change little changed. An opening is a job an employer was still trying to fill on the last business day of the month. The only decline in openings the bureau called a decrease was at the smallest firms. The openings rate, unfilled jobs as a share of employment plus openings, fell to 4.3% from 6.0% at firms with 1 to 9 employees, and the count fell by 335,000 to 1.05 million. It said openings changed little in all industries. July's openings were revised up by 64,000, and the August figures are still preliminary. A year earlier openings were 6.919 million, so August was 160,000 higher than that. Hires rose 46,000 to 5.192 million, and the hires rate moved to 3.3% from 3.2% in July. Quits, people who left a job on their own, were unchanged at 3.1 million, and the share of workers who quit stayed at 1.9%. Layoffs and discharges fell 61,000 to 1.641 million, and that rate was 1.0%, down from 1.1% in July. There was about one unemployed person for each opening, with 7.0 million people counted as unemployed in August. From March 2018 through December 2019, the bureau has reported, unemployed people per opening stayed below 1.0 for 22 months, so open jobs outnumbered people out of work. The same morning, the Conference Board said consumer confidence fell 6.7 points to 81.9 in September, from a revised 88.6 in August. It said the fall was largely driven by more people calling business conditions bad. "The Consumer Confidence Index deteriorated notably in September, following two prior months of softening," said Dana M. Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board. Views of jobs weakened too. The gap between the share saying work is plentiful and the share saying it is hard to get fell 2.5 percentage points, to 1.7%. Plentiful was still ahead: 23.6% said jobs were plentiful, and 21.9% said they were hard to get. Expectations for jobs ahead turned down as well. Net expectations for the labor market fell 3.1 percentage points, to minus 14.4%. The share expecting fewer jobs over the next six months rose to 28.4%, from 26.1% in August. The survey ran from September 1 to September 23, the Conference Board said, and that window included the Federal Reserve's rate increase on September 16. ## The year-end rate still sits higher On Wednesday, September 16, the Federal Open Market Committee voted 12 to 0 to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 0.25 percentage point, to 3.75% to 4%. That is the overnight rate banks charge one another. The committee said inflation remains elevated, and that the increase will support a timelier return to its 2% goal. Projections published that day put the median rate officials judged appropriate at **4.1%** for the end of 2026. The midpoint of the current range is 3.875%, so the median sits 0.225 percentage point above it. One more increase of 0.25 percentage point would put the midpoint at 4.125%, just above 4.1%. On our read, the miss does not weaken the case for another increase. Inflation, which the committee still calls elevated, outweighs it, even though households turned gloomier on jobs than the employer count did. Governor Michael S. Barr, who supported the increase, said on September 23 that in his base case, "further policy adjustments are likely to be needed to ensure inflation comes down to target in a timely fashion." At 10:53 a.m. Eastern time, after the 10 a.m. release, the 10-year Treasury yield was 5.254%, compared with 5.24% at Monday's close. The 2-year yield, the one most tied to the next rate decision, was 4.922% this morning, compared with Monday's 4.92% close. Chart: Monday’s Treasury curve **sloped up** from 4.04% to 5.56% Bond prices move the other way from yields. At that hour the iShares fund that holds Treasury bonds maturing in 20 years or more, TLT, was down 0.4% from Monday's close, and the SPDR fund that tracks the S&P 500, SPY, was down 0.03%. Barr speaks at 12:40 p.m. Eastern time in Detroit on the outlook. The September report on payrolls and unemployment is due Friday, October 2, at 8:30 a.m. A cooler line from him this afternoon, or a weak jobs count on Friday, is what would have to arrive before the case for another increase looks weaker than it did this morning. Source: etf.net, https://etf.net/news/august-job-openings-were-7-079-million-a-miss-the-bureau-called-little-changed-2026-09-29. Please cite the page URL.