KPMG sees record job openings in professional services, hiring stays cautious

Job openings in professional and business services jumped by 668,000 in April to help push the national total to 7.6 million, a sign that KPMG, consultancies, and other white-collar employers are still hiring, but doing it carefully. For auditors, consultants, and tax professionals, the message is less about a hot labor market than a selective one: demand is alive, but firms are still managing headcount tightly.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said total openings rose by 731,000 from March, while hires fell to 5.1 million. The openings rate reached 4.6 percent, and the openings-to-unemployed-worker ratio climbed back to 1.0 from 0.95 in March, a level the Federal Reserve watches closely as a gauge of labor-market tightness. Quits edged down to 1.9 percent and the layoff rate eased to 1.1 percent, reinforcing the sense of a market that is still moving, but not with the urgency seen in boom periods.

For KPMG and its peers, the standout number was the 668,000 increase in professional and business services openings, which KPMG described as a record for the series that began in 2000. That matters inside firms where promotion timing, lateral hiring, and staffing plans are all tied to how easily talent can be found and retained. When openings are still rising in advisory, accounting, tax, and compliance, candidates can keep pressing on pay, flexibility, and career progression, even if firms are taking a more disciplined approach than they did during earlier hiring surges.

At the same time, the weakness in finance and insurance, where openings fell by 135,000, shows the market is not broad-based. KPMG also said pay growth for job changers was 6.6 percent in April, unchanged from March, suggesting wage pressure has stabilized rather than accelerated. That gives firms some breathing room on compensation, but not enough to stop workers from shopping around when schedules, travel demands, or busy-season pressure become too much.

The size of the employer matters, too. Indeed Hiring Lab said openings at establishments with 5,000 or more workers were 81 percent above pre-pandemic levels in April, but those giants account for less than 5 percent of all JOLTS openings. Openings at firms with 50 to 999 workers were still about 12 percent below baseline, and roughly 90 percent of openings were tied to employers with fewer than 1,000 workers. In practice, that means a few very large companies can make the labor market look stronger than it feels for most professionals moving across the market.

Indeed also said the labor market has been bumping along the bottom, with software development jobs, especially those tied to AI, up 14 percent year over year as of April 30. EY said payrolls rose 115,000 in April and unemployment held at 4.3 percent, a picture of steady but low-growth conditions. For KPMG professionals, the takeaway is clear: there is still room to move for better pay or flexibility, but firms have regained enough leverage to make every move more deliberate.