Top economist David Rosenberg mocks calls for the Fed to hike interest rates again after job openings surge
- David Rosenberg has ridiculed calls for the Fed to hike interest rates yet again.
- The top economist weighed in after the JOLTS report showed a surge in US job openings last month.
David Rosenberg has poked fun at the idea that the Federal Reserve has to raise interest rates again, after a surge in job openings sparked fears that the US economy is overheating and needs to be cooled down.
"Stop the presses! Job openings rose +358k in April. The Fed has to tighten!!" the Rosenberg Research president and former chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch tweeted on Wednesday.
"After all, the JOLTS is such a holy-grail statistic, with its huge 30% response rate (half what it was pre-Covid)," he continued. "Can you imagine that this is the metric the Fed bases its policy decisions on??"
The April JOLTS report, published Wednesday, unexpectedly showed that job openings rose and layoffs fell. Some analysts warned the data could embolden the Fed to tighten again, as it might think it can lift borrowing costs higher without causing too much pain in the robust labor market.
However, Rosenberg's tweet suggests he's skeptical of the report's validity, given it's a survey with a low response rate. He's also made it clear that he believes the Fed has done enough. The central bank has already raised rates from nearly zero to upwards of 5% since last spring in a bid to tame inflation, which is now cooling from the four-decade highs it hit in 2022.
Most traders now expect the Fed to pause its tightening campaign in June, before hiking rates once again in July, according to the CME Group's FedWatch tool.
Earlier this month, Rosenberg shrugged off the idea that inflation will prove "sticky" – and warned the benchmark S&P 500 index was already signaling a recession.