Gate News message, April 3, according to The Kobeissi Letter data, U.S. February government job openings fell to 701,000, the second-lowest level since December 2020, down by 524,000 from the 2022 peak. Only 89,000 federal government vacancies remain, and the hiring rate fell to 1.4%, matching the low point from 2016 to 2017. Private companies also carried out large-scale layoffs in tandem: Oracle reportedly cut up to 30,000 jobs, Amazon reduced 16,000 positions, and Block laid off more than 4,000 people. In terms of consumer confidence, the proportion who believe jobs are plentiful is only 27.3%, far below about 55% in 2022; the labor market divergence indicator fell to 5.8 percentage points, the lowest since the pandemic. Kobeissi noted that this indicator has historically been a reliable leading signal of rising unemployment, and that at the current level it has only appeared around economic recessions.