WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers posted 7.2 million job vacancies in July as the American labor market continues to cool.
The Labor Department reported Wednesday that job openings fell from 7.4 million in June and came in modestly below what economists had forecast. Healthcare and social assistance companies cut openings by 181,000 and retailers by 110,000.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed that layoffs rose slightly. The number of Americans quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in their ability to find better pay, opportunities or working conditions elsewhere — was unchanged from June at 3.2 million.
Jobs openings remain at healthy levels but have fallen steadily since peaking at a record 12.1 million in March 2022 as the U.S. economy roared back from COVID-19 lockdowns.
The U.S. job market has lost momentum this year, partly because of the lingering effects of 11 interest rate hikes by the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve in 2022 and 2023 and partly because President Donald Trump’s trade wars have created uncertainty that is paralyzing managers making hiring decisions.
On Friday, the Labor Department will put out unemployment and hiring numbers for August. They are expected to show that businesses, government agencies and nonprofits added nearly 80,000 jobs last month, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. That would mark a modest improvement on the disappointing 73,000 they created in July.
Worse than the lackluster July hiring figures were Labor Department revisions that slashed a stunning 258,000 jobs off May and June payrolls. A furious Trump responded to the bad numbers by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the technocratic agency that compiles the statistics, and nominating a partisan idealogue to replace her.
So far this year, the economy has been generating 85,000 jobs a month, down from 168,000 last year and an average 400,000 a month during the hiring boom of 2021-2023.
In a time of uncertainty, employers are less likely to hire, but they’re not letting workers go either.
In a social media post Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that jobs openings in July had come in below the number of U.S. unemployed (7.24 million) for the first time since April 2021. “This is yet another crack in the labor market that illustrates how much harder it is to get a new job right now than what we’ve seen in a long time,” she wrote.
FILE - Help wanted sign is displayed at a live music and blues club in Chicago, Thursday, July 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, whose archrivalry with another former premier defined the country’s politics for a generation, has died, her Bangladesh Nationalist Party said in a statement Tuesday. She was 80.
Zia was the first woman elected prime minister of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh's interim government announced a three-day mourning period. A general holiday also was announced for Wednesday when Zia’s funeral prayers are scheduled be held in front of the country's national Parliament building in Dhaka.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences in a statement Tuesday, noting that “as the first woman Prime Minister of Bangladesh, her important contributions toward the development of Bangladesh, as well as India-Bangladesh relations, will always be remembered.”
Sajeeb Wazed, son of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said in a statement Tuesday that Zia’s demise “will leave a deep impact on the country’s (democratic) transition.”
“She will be remembered for her contributions in nation building but her death is a blow to stabilize Bangladesh,” said Wazed, whose mother was Zia’s greatest political rival.
Zia had faced corruption cases she said were politically motivated, but in January 2025 the Supreme Court acquitted Zia in the last corruption case against her, which would have let her run in February’s general election.
The BNP said that after she was released from prison due to illness in 2020, her family sought permission for treatment abroad at least 18 times from Hasina's administration, but the requests were rejected.
Following Hasina’s ouster in 2024, an interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus finally allowed her to go. She went to London in January and returned to Bangladesh in May.
Bangladesh’s early years of independence, gained in a bloody 1971 war against Pakistan, were marked by assassinations, coups and countercoups as military figures and secular and Islamic leaders jockeyed for power.
Zia’s husband, President Ziaur Rahman, had grabbed power as a military chief in 1977 and a year later formed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. He was credited with opening democracy in the country, but he was killed in a 1981 military coup. Zia’s uncompromising stance against the military dictatorship helped build a mass movement against it, culminating with the ousting of dictator and former army chief H.M. Ershad in 1990.
Zia’s opponent when she won her first term in 1991 and in several elections after that was Hasina, the daughter of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in a 1975 coup.
Zia was criticized over an early 1996 election in which her party won 278 of the 300 parliamentary seats during a wide boycott by other leading parties including Hasina’s Awami League, which demanded an election-time caretaker government. Zia’s government lasted only 12 days before a nonpartisan caretaker government was installed and the new election was held that June.
Zia returned to power in 2001 in a government shared with the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which had a dark past involving Bangladesh’s independence war.
Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party was previously closely allied with the party, and her government maintained the confidence of the business community by following pro-investment, open market policies. Zia was known to have a soft spot for Pakistan and used to deliver anti-Indian political speeches. India alleged insurgents were allowed to use Bangladesh’s soil to destabilize India’s northeastern states under Zia, especially during her term from 2001-2006.
During that term, Zia was also tainted by allegations that her elder son, Tarique Rahman, was running a parallel government and was involved in widespread corruption.
In 2004, Hasina blamed Zia’s government and Rahman for grenade attacks in Dhaka that killed 24 members of her Awami League party and wounded hundreds of people. Hasina narrowly escaped the attack, which she characterized as an assassination attempt, and subsequently won the 2008 general election.
Zia’s party and its partners boycotted the 2014 election in a dispute over a caretaker government, giving a one-sided victory to the increasingly authoritarian regime of Hasina. Her party joined the national elections in 2018 but boycotted again in 2024, allowing Hasina to return to power for a fourth consecutive time through controversial elections.
Zia was sentenced to 17 years in jail in two separate corruption cases for misuse of power in embezzling funds meant for a charity named after her late husband. Her party said the charges were politically motivated to weaken the opposition, but the Hasina government said it did not interfere and the case was a matter for the courts.
Hasina was bitterly criticized by both her opponents and independent critics for sending Zia to jail.
Zia was released from jail by Hasina’s government in 2020 and was moved to a rented home, from where she regularly visited a private hospital. Her family repeatedly requested Hasina’s administration to allow Zia to travel abroad for medical treatment, but was refused.
After 15 years in power, Hasina was ousted in a mass uprising in August 2024 and fled the country. Zia was given permission to travel abroad by an interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Zia was silent about politics for years and did not attend political rallies, but she remained the BNP chairperson until her death. Rahman has been the party’s acting chair since 2018.
She was last seen at an annual function of the Bangladesh military in Dhaka Cantonment on Nov. 21, when Yunus and other political leaders met her. She was in a wheelchair and appeared pale and tired.
She is survived by Rahman, her elder son and heir apparent in the political dynasty. Her younger son, Arafat, died in 2015.
A portrait of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia is displayed on a digital screen near the hospital where she died, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Dec. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
A woman reacts while waiting behind barricades outside the hospital where former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia died, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Dec. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
FILE - Bangladesh's main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party chief and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia looks upwards as she attends a rally of her supporters outside their party headquarters in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, March 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, File)
FILE - Khaleda Zia takes an oath of office as the prime minister in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Oct. 10, 2001. (AP Photo/Pavel Rahman, File)
FILE - Bangladesh's former prime minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Khaleda Zia, center, leaves court after a hearing in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Aug. 10, 2016. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Bangladesh's ailing former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia leaves the airport in a car after arriving from London, May 6, 2025, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. (AP Photo/Mahud Hossain Opu, File)
FILE - Khaleda Zia, Bangladeshi opposition leader and former prime minister, waves at the start of a 400-kilometer protest march from Dhaka to the northern village of Dinajpur, May 16, 1999. (AP Photo/Pavel Rahman, File)
FILE - Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia waves to supporters after she was arrested, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sept. 3, 2007. (AP Photo/Pavel Rahman, File)
