(Kitco News) - The gold market is seeing renewed selling pressure Tuesday morning, as the U.S. labor market remains fairly healthy due to an increasing number of jobs available.
Job openings, a measure of labor demand, dropped to 8.14 million as of the last day of May, up from April’s downwardly revised figure of 7.092 million the Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report.
“Over the month, both the number of hires and total separations were little changed at 5.8 million and 5.4 million, respectively,” the report said.
The latest labor market data fell better than expected, as economists expected to see 7.96 million job openings.
The healthy employment data is weighing on gold as it remains a key factor in the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decision. The U.S. central bank has said that it wouldn’t be ready to cut interest rates until it sees some slack in the U.S. labor market.
August gold futures last traded at $2,334.50 an ounce, down 0.18% on the day.
Although the JOLTS report shows a healthy labor market, some analysts note that beneath the headline numbers, weakness is starting to show. Some analysts note that despite May’s increase, the number of open positions has been in a solid downtrend for the last two years.
“Despite the modest rise in job openings in May, the big picture remains that labour market conditions continue to slowly normalise, and the low quits rate still points to a sharp slowdown in wage growth,” said Olivia Cross, North America Economist at Capital Economics.
Greg Michalowski, senior currency analyst at Forexlive.com, pointed out that most of the gains were due to an increase in government job openings.
“The monthly increase in government job openings was the second highest on record,” he said.
