The number of non-farm payrolls added in July hit a nearly one-year high, and the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since the outbreak in March last year. It may mean that the US labour market is showing a deeper structural contradiction: there are now more job openings than the number of unemployed.

The National Alliance of Independent Enterprises (NFIB) said the day before the non-farm payrolls data that 49 per cent of US small businesses reported unfilled jobs as of July, the highest proportion on record and 27 percentage points higher than the historical average of 22 per cent over the past 48 years, double the historical average, highlighting the irregularities during the epidemic.

In May, the proportion reached about 48 per cent, a record for the fourth month in a row, and fell to 46 per cent in June after quarterly adjustments. It is worth noting that 93 per cent of small businesses looking to hire in July said they had received "few or no qualified applications" for jobs they were trying to fill.

Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at NFIB, points out that this trend has affected business activity during the busy summer, as small businesses are raising wages to their highest levels in nearly half a century (48 years) to attract employees they need (but must not).

It was also reported this week that the industry group's briefing to the Oklahoma Supreme Court supporting the state's governor's decision to early terminate the extra unemployment benefits against the epidemic may have something to do with an attempt to save the sluggish employment situation of small businesses.

According to the financial blog Zerohedge, the results of the May US Job Vacancy and Labor Mobility Survey (JOLTS), an employment indicator focused by U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen, released in early July.The number of job openings reached an all-time high of 9.209 million in the month.The latest figures from NFIB confirm that the number of JOLTS vacancies released with a two-month delay will rise instead of falling in June and July:

This means that, at least according to this key indicator, the US job market has not only shown 'further substantial progress', but is now fully back to normal as the number of job openings once again exceeds the number of unemployed.

Unemployment fell to 8.7 million in July from 9.5 million in June, the lowest since March 2020, according to the BLS of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March last year, due to the economic shutdown, the number of unemployed in the United States exceeded the number of job openings by a record 18.5 million, ending the previous trend of more job openings than unemployed for 24 consecutive months. "

The analysis seems to suggest that the prerequisites for the Fed to start the tightening cycle by reducing its bond purchases (taper) have been met.

The prevailing expectation on Wall Street is that the Fed will begin taper by 2022 at the latest, and the gradual tapering of asset purchases is expected to take 10 months or more, which will eventually lead to a rise in interest rates in 2023. After Friday's positive non-farm payrolls release, futures traders raised their expectations of a 25 basis point rate hike by the end of 2022 to 42.7 per cent from 40.5 per cent, and the probability of a total 50 basis point hike next year also rose by 5 percentage points.

The number of non-farm payrolls in the United States is still more than 5.7 million lower than before the outbreak in February 2020, Grant Thornton Chief Economist Diane Swonk said today. Michael Arone, chief strategist at State Street Global Investment Advisors, also believes that more than 800000 non-farm payrolls have been created on average in the past few months, and that the labor market will need about seven months to recover the losses caused by the epidemic, in line with investors' expectations that the Fed is about to launch taper.

It was mentioned in the articleJudging from the rate of repairing the employment gapThis yearThe second half of the year50-60Ten thousand people/The average monthly job creation will be enough to increase the employment gap by the end of the year from the current30%Repair to15%This is enough to open up the goods of the Federal Reserve.TaperThe terms of the.If non-farm payrolls in July exceed the 850000 in June, the employment recovery rate will reach the level seen when the Fed issued the taper signal in May 2013, and the Fed is expected to send the taper signal in August.

Mainstream analysts also believe that US non-farm payrolls growth is expected to continue and the number of job vacancies will decline as all anti-epidemic emergency unemployment benefits expire in early September and millions of people receiving government benefits must rejoin the workforce. A big unknown risk is that COVID-19 's Delta mutation could force the economy to shut down again, interfere with the recovery of the job market, or make it impossible to tighten policy.