Help (Still) Wanted

The job market remains strong. That was the message from a couple of labor market indicators today. The most timely was January's consumer confidence survey. The series for "jobs hard to get" dropped to 9.8% of respondents, almost a record-low reading (chart). This suggests that the unemployment rate remained below 4.0% this month.

The survey's "jobs plentiful" series jumped to 45.5% during January (chart). The JOLTS series on job openings through December came out today too; it ticked up to 9.0 million, which is a high reading and might have gone higher this month according to January's consumer confidence survey.