April job openings show biggest drop in nearly 4 years

— -- Job seekers were jolted Tuesday by new government data showing the number of available jobs dropped by 325,000 in April to 3.4 million.

That was the biggest single-month drop since September 2008's falloff of 438,000.

The news comes as markets await Wednesday's Federal Reserve statement on the economy at the end of a two-day meeting of its policy-setting committee. Stocks rose Tuesday in anticipation that the Fed will announce further help for an economy that has shown some signs of slowing.

Economists were divided on whether the job openings report was old news, since the government reported weak job growth for May as long ago as June 2. But several, like Gus Faucher of PNC Financial Services Group, said it was consistent with other data that show the economy continuing to soften this spring. Job openings and hiring slacked off the most in manufacturing industries and in the Midwest, each of which had been among the best performers as a recovery appeared to gather steam last winter.

"It's bad," Moody's Analytics managing director Sophia Koropeckyj said. "Is it important? Potentially, it is. It confirms what else we've been seeing: that manufacturing continues to be affected by the world economy and a stronger dollar."

The crisis in Europe and slowing growth in much of the developing world seem to be behind much of the dip in job growth, since both exports and imports have declined in the most recent reports, Faucher said. The economy added only 69,000 jobs in May after monthly gains as big as 259,000 new jobs in February, when warm weather may have accelerated hiring that would normally occur in the spring, Koropeckyj said.

Job openings declined from March in nearly all sectors of the economy, the government said. Manufacturing openings fell by 20% to 246,000, nearly a fifth of the broader economy's decline. Even education and health services, one of the most durable sectors in the recovery, had 17,000 fewer openings in April, the government said.

The economy is growing slowly, economists agree. The U.S. perhaps added more than 100,000 jobs in June, Faucher said. The unemployment rate, now 8.2%, could fall as low as 7.2% by the end of 2013, Barclays Capital said Tuesday.