(Kitco News) - Gold prices are holding relatively steady gains, testing resistance below $2,050 an ounce even as the U.S. labor market remains relatively healthy with plenty of jobs available for potential workers.
Job openings, a measure of labor demand, rose to 9.03 million as of the last day of December, the Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, on Tuesday, relatively unchanged from November’s revised increate to 8.93 million.
“Over the month, the rate was unchanged at 5.4 percent,” the report said.
According to consensus estimates, economists were looking for job openings to drop to around 8.73 million.
At the same time, the number of people who voluntarily quit their job fell to 3.4 million, the lowest in nearly three years. This component of the report has declined in recent months, which, according to some economists could indicate that Americans are feeling less confident in their ability to find other jobs in the current market or to get new jobs that are better paid.
The gold market is not seeing much reaction to the latest employment data. February gold futures last traded at $2,040.50 an ounce, up 0.75% on the day.
Although inflation has dropped sharply over the last few months, the Federal Reserve has been clear that it needs to see some slack in the labor market before it would be confident that inflation is under control leading to lower interest rates.
