United States
The number of job openings in March totaled 5.743mm, about in line with the estimate while February was revised down by 61k to 5.682mm. This is the most since July 2016 but has basically been in a range since mid 2015. See below.
Subtracting separations from hirings saw net hiring at 172k which is essentially in line with the recent trend. The hiring rate held at 3.8% while the level of quitters rose by 80k after falling by 150k in February. The quit rate held at 2.1%.
Bottom line, the supply of jobs is there, although it hasn’t risen much over the past few years. As seen in the following chart though, it is getting harder and harder to fill these spots. This is from today’s April read on Job Openings Hard To Fill dating back to 2000:
In the March final read on wholesale inventories, we saw an upward revision to .2% from the initial print of down .1%. The inventory to sales ratio held at 1.28 as sales were flat. Bottom line, this may lead to a slightly higher revision to Q1 GDP as remember inventories were a major drag. Specifically looking at auto inventories, the I/S ratio matches the highest level since November.
Peter is the Chief Market Analyst with The Lindsey Group. He is Co-CIO at Bookmark Advisors, a member of the Advisory Services Network and a regular CNBC Contributor.