The US markets closed lower on Tuesday, for the second straight session as market sentiment turned jittery ahead of a UK general election and uncertainties associated with former Federal Bureau of Investigation boss James Comey’s testimony to the Senate later this week. The head of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) said that US President Donald Trump’s proposed spending cuts for Central America are ‘not a good sign’ for efforts to reduce immigration from the poor, violent region. Trump’s austere 2018 budget proposal, which is unlikely to get legislative approval, envisages slashing US aid to Guatemala by almost 40 percent from 2016. IADB President Luis Alberto Moreno added that to make a real change in Central America, the United States needed to maintain regional spending of around $600 million for seven years before contemplating lowering its outlay.
On the economy front, US job openings surged to a record high in April and employers appeared to have trouble finding suitable workers, pointing to a tightening labor market that could encourage the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next month. The Labor Department’s monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, published also suggests that a recent moderation in job growth could be the result of a skills mismatch rather than easing demand for labor. Job openings, a measure of labor demand, increased 259,000 to a seasonally adjusted 6.0 million in April, the highest since the government started tracking the series in 2000. The monthly increase was the largest in just over a year and pushed the jobs openings rate to 4.0 percent, the highest since last July, from 3.8 percent in March. Hiring, however, decreased by 253,000 jobs and stood at 5.1 million. That lowered the hiring rate to a one-year low of 3.5 percent from 3.6 percent in March.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 47.81 points or 0.23 percent to 21,136.23, Nasdaq was down 20.62 points or 0.33 percent to 6,275.06, while S&P 500 edged lower by 6.77 points or 0.28 percent to 2,429.33.