U.S. job openings fall to 11.26 million, consumer confidence increases

Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman breaks down the latest economic data: JOLTS job openings and consumer confidence.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Julie, back to you though. Some breaking news on the consumer and jobs front.

JULIE HYMAN: Yes, let's talk about consumer confidence quickly first. The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Measure at 107.2. That is actually an increase from a downwardly revised 105.7 in February. So this 107.2 is the March number. The present situation index much, much higher than the expectations, apart of this reading.

So present situation at 153. Expectations at 76.6. So definitely people expecting things to get worse, although right now feeling robust, according to this particular read of Consumer Confidence. We also got job openings, the so-called JOLTS, and that coming in at 11.26, 11.27 if you round up, million job openings in the US. It is a down tick from the prior month.

And this is a February read, to be clear. So it is a downtick from January, but not by much. 11.28 million is how many jobs were open in January. Now 11.27 million or so in February, and that is a higher number, a higher number of openings, than had been anticipated. What does all of this mean, if you sort of read between the lines here? It basically means that there are still a lot of unfilled jobs that are out there in America.

The quit rate, by the way, at 2.9%. That means 4.352 million people quit a job in the month of February. Separations in February at 4.1%. So again, just another reading on the job market that indicates that there is this strength that we are seeing in a relatively full job market here.

In terms of those confidence numbers, again sort of confirming some of what we've been getting, that people are in pretty good shape right now, despite inflation happening, right, despite their concerns about inflation. But they are concerned that things are going to deteriorate. So really interesting stuff, especially when you couple it with the Gallup numbers that we talked about earlier, Sozz, that talked about people are-- 17% of Americans consider inflation to be the greatest threat in America, or the most important factor in America right now.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, it's just, it's weird. It's weird stuff, Julie, because in the same breath, we're talking about a yield curve inversion potentially predicting a recession maybe this-- maybe later this year or next year. It also comes alongside weakening-- a weakening read in another Consumer Confidence Measure from Michigan Sentiment. So that has been under pressure as well. All in all, I think there's going to be a lot more intrigue around this jobs report on Friday than the market goers expect.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, most definitely. I mean, that's the bottom line, is that everything else you're talking about, inflation, concern about inflation, but people have jobs right now, right? So that is sort of this offset. And I agree that the Friday's number even gains even more importance.