The December job openings reached nearly 11 million, while the Great Resignation was cooled down, Labor Department data Tuesday showed.

In a sign of a tightening labor supply, the number of vacancies increased to 10.92million, which is well beyond the FactSet estimate at 10.28million and a 1.4% increase from November. At 6.8%, the rate of openings for job vacancies as a percentage of the workforce was stable.

After soaring to new record heights over the past months due to a combination of factors, quits dropped to 4.34million, or 3.6%. With a drop of 0.1%, the quits rate was 2.9%.

JOLTS is a key indicator for measuring labor market slack.

Further evidence of how close the economy remains to full employment can be seen in December’s data. There were more workers than vacancies. unemployed for the month.

The omicron variant of the unemployment insurance sent millions to the sidelines in January. This is making January a difficult month.

Nick Bunker from Indeed Hiring Lab, who is director of research said that “Today’s report indicates that the new wave of the pandemic caused in part by the omicron variant has not yet fully affected the labor market.” According to Indeed Hiring Lab director Nick Bunker, the demand for workers was strong, while layoffs reached a new record low. The data suggests that December had no significant impact, but January’s outlook is not as positive.

The ISM Manufacturing Survey for January was released Tuesday. It came back at 57.6%. This is a decrease of 1.2 percentage point from December, but it’s still slightly higher than the Dow Jones estimate of 57.4%. This number is the percentage of businesses that reported expansion in January.

Federal Reserve officials have been closely monitoring the most recent data in preparation for their first tightening cycles since 2018.

According to policymakers, the Fed is fulfilling its dual mandate. The economy has met the benchmark of 2% inflation and they are confident that the Fed will be successful in full employment.

The ISM Index reflected the inflation pressures, with the Prices Index hitting 76.1%. That’s 7.9 percentage point higher than December.