November job openings hit 10.4 million, manufacturing activity in line with estimates

Yahoo Finance Live’s Julie Hyman breaks down the November job openings report as well as ISM manufacturing data.

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BRIAN SOZZI: But Julie, I know you are tracking some breaking news, speaking of jobs, on the JOLTS front.

JULIE HYMAN: Yes, on the JOLTS front, job openings in the month of November at about 10.46 million, let's call it. That is actually an increase. Oh, no, excuse me, it's a decrease from the revised number, a decrease from 10 and 1/2 million. And it's also higher than estimated. So in other words, there are more job openings than had been estimated by a pretty wide margin here.

And I know we're looking through the report. But I just want to mention the ISM numbers as well. We got the Institute for Supply Management's Manufacturing Index coming in at 48.4 for the month of December. So this is very fresh data. And that's pretty much in-line with the 48 and 1/2 that was estimated. It's also a tick down from the prior month.

Prices paid also ticking down, though. That's a little bit of good news here, 39.4 in that manufacturing report, which is down from 43 the prior month. And it's also much lower than the about 43 that was estimated by economists.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, I would say this is almost peak goodness, potentially, in the JOLTS report. Of course, they are measuring numbers for November. You see results, or you see news like we've seen from Salesforce today. What, Brad, that's about 8,000 people that are about to lose their jobs at the company, joining many other tech companies. I can't see these JOLTS numbers getting any better from here.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, and across some of the categories within-- or the sectors within this JOLTS report particularly that stick out, job openings-- and again, this is at the last business day of November. But those openings, they actually increased in professional and business services by about 212,000 during the month and then in nondurable goods manufacturing by about 39,000 there, but decreased in finance and insurance by about 75,000. And then federal government rose by about 44,000 there.

And so that kind of gives you some type of insight into the movement that we've seen sector by sector. But again, when you hear about the headlines from a Salesforce, from some of the other major tech companies that had already previously announced theirs and in the professional and business services category, how that might continue to show up even in future data.

BRIAN SOZZI: Goldman Sachs, just this week, out with layoffs.

JULIE HYMAN: To be clear, the Fed does not want to see a JOLTS report like this, right? They want to see some tightening in the labor market, which is not really evidenced in this because they want evidence that their efforts to cool inflation by cooling the economy are working.

Now, there is evidence, maybe on that manufacturing report-- maybe that's a little bit more positive when it comes to the readthrough for the Fed if we are seeing a little bit of a contraction there. And in fact, it is 30-- after 30 straight months of expansion, now we're seeing that manufacturing report the lowest since May of 2020. And again, that prices paid component going down.

So a little bit of a good news-bad news in these two reports, again, purely from a readthrough for the Fed perspective. And it looks like we are seeing stocks come off a little bit from the highs of the session, as we do get these two reports. Again, the other thing is, the JOLTS report is more of a dated report, right? It's from November. Manufacturing is from December. So take that into account when you look at these numbers as well.