WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of job openings across the country barely budged in October, coming in at 7.7 million with ongoing uncertainty over the direction of the American economy.

The Labor Department this week reported that employers posted 7.67 million vacancies in October, close to September’s 7.66 million.

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which was delayed by the extended federal government shutdown, also showed that the layoffs increased and the number of people quitting their
jobs — typically viewed by economists as a sign of confidence in the labor market — declined in October.

Job openings have come down steadily since peaking at a record 12.1 million in March 2022, when the economy was roaring back from COVID-19 government lockdowns.

Economists say the job market has cooled partly because of the lingering effect of the high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in 2022 and 2023 that were designed to combat an outburst of elevated inflation.

Overall, economists say it’s a puzzling time for the American economy, buffeted by President Donald Trump’s decision to reverse decades of United States policy in favor of free trade and instead impose double-digit tariffs on imports from most of the world’s countries.

Policymakers at the Federal Reserve were scheduled to meet this week to decide whether to lower their benchmark interest rate. The gathering is expected to be unusually contentious.

Inflation remains stuck above the Fed’s 2 percent target, partly because importers have tried to pass along the cost of Trump’s tariffs by raising prices.

Typically, stubborn inflation would discourage Fed policymakers from cutting rates, but the job market has looked shaky in recent months, and the Fed is expected to reduce its benchmark rate for the third time this year, though some policymakers might dissent.

The 43-day shutdown, meanwhile, has made a mess of the government’s economic statistics.

The October report on job openings came out a week late and the September version was not published separately because federal data collectors were on furlough.

Instead, September’s JOLTS numbers were folded into the new report along with October’s. The Labor Department will issue numbers for hiring and unemployment in November next Tuesday, 11 days later than originally scheduled.

The department is not releasing an unemployment rate for October because it could not calculate the number during the shutdown.

It will release some of the October jobs data — including the number of positions that employers created that month — along with the full November jobs report.

Forecasters surveyed by the data firm FactSet predict that employers added fewer than 38,000 jobs in November and that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.5 percent from September’s 4.4 percent, low by historical standards but the highest in nearly four years.

In Ohio, unemployment claims filed during the week of Nov. 16 through Nov. 22 increased by 708 from the previous week to 6,669, according to Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.