Job openings in the United States decreased in April for the first time in three months, showing that companies started to lose confidence in the expansion’s durability even before hiring slumped in May, Bloomberg reported.

The number of positions waiting to be filled fell by 151,000 to 2.97 million, the U.S. Department of Labor said today. The number of people hired and the number of workers fired also decreased.

The unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent in May, with employers adding the fewest workers in eight months, Labor Department data showed last week. More job gains are needed to drive consumer spending after economic growth slowed in the beginning of the year.

The loss in vacancies was led by a 91,000 decrease in professional and business services, followed by a drop of 65,000 jobs in education and health services. The construction industry had a 28,000 increase in openings in April.

“We’ve got a very weak, very mild recovery, which does not create enough demand for labor,” said Henry Mo, an economist at Credit Suisse, in an interview with Bloomberg. “Even if all the open positions were filled overnight, we’d still have almost 11 million workers without jobs.”