Jobs market health still in question ahead of Jan payrolls

This week's slew of soft labour market data releases – including a further slump in job openings, higher weekly jobless claims, and a rebound in Challenger job cut announcements – has resurfaced concerns about the health of the jobs market, placing added importance on next week’s January employment report. If, as we expect, the unemployment rate remains stable at 4.4%, that should go some way toward easing fears that the labour market has taken another turn for the worse, despite likely sizeable downward adjustments to last year’s job gains from the annual benchmark revision.