Job openings are up, especially in manufacturing and construction

We are about to get hit with a deluge of labor market data. On Friday, the Labor Department will report how much hiring happened this month. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will report how much personal income grew in August. And on Tuesday, the Labor Department will report how many job openings were posted in August.

Those vacancies can give us a sense of where labor demand is strongest right now. Early in the year, employers were not posting all that many open positions.

“But over these past few months, you’re starting to see job openings growth pick up,” said Nicole Cervi, an economist at Wells Fargo.

That new growth is being fueled by the goods-producing side of the economy, she said. “Retail trade, wholesale trade, construction, manufacturing.”

Cervi said those sectors were not doing much hiring last year, because tariffs caused demand for goods to slow down. But this year, trade policy is a little more certain.

“I think a lot of those firms have some pent-up demand for labor, and they’re trying to right-size here in 2026,” Cervi said.

Demand for AI infrastructure is also fueling job openings, she said — especially in construction and manufacturing.

That demand is pushing up wages, too, according to Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide.

“Particularly if I’m looking at construction workers, you’ve actually seen an increase, or an acceleration, in their average hourly earnings,” she said.

But demand for labor on the services side of the economy has not been so strong, said Bostjancic. So wage growth has been weaker there, too.

“If I looked at the end of 2025, average hourly earnings in the service sector were 3.7%, and now it’s slowed to 2.9%,” she said.

Still, the strength we’re seeing on the goods side is supporting consumer spending overall, said Bostjancic, and she expects that economic growth will pick up in the third quarter.