Job Openings in April Jumped 5.2 %, says Labor Department

Data tracked by government showed that advertisement for job openings by US employers in April is the highest in past 15 years.

The Labor Department on Tuesday revealed that the number of open jobs at the end of April jumped 5.2 % to 5.4 million. The data indicates that employers anticipate stronger customer demand in the coming months.

Officials said that the US job market has remained quite healthy even as the economy weakened at the beginning of the 2015.

The steady hiring by the US employers shows that businesses see the economic slump as having resulted mainly from temporary factors such as a harsh winter.

On Friday, the government said that employers added a strong 280,000 jobs in May after a healthy gain in April.

Paul Ashworth, chief US economist for Capital Economics, said the Tuesday's figures show that higher than expected gain in employment in May was not accidental. Labor market conditions are strengthening and wage growth will accelerate further, said Ashworth.

The unemployment rate rose to 5.5% last month, from 5.4 %. But on the other hand, the strengthening job market and wage gains encouraged more people to start searching for work, reducing the number for those who had given up the hunt.

The figures reported Tuesday, in the Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, are more detailed as compared to those that were released in last Friday's jobs report.

Seattle resident David Peters said, "I went from something that was fairly conservative to something that was aggressively risky - a startup. I do have a lot more confidence in the overall economy and that allowed me to make that shift".