For all the signs of a cooling economy, employers sure had an awful lot of open jobs as summer came to an end, according to a shocker of a labor market report out today. But it's probably sending a misleading signal.

Driving the news: Employers reported having 9.6 million job openings at the end of August, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover report, up 690,000 from July, driven by a particularly large surge in professional and business services openings.

• Taken at face value, that would seem to suggest Corporate America is ramping up hiring plans once again — implying the super-tight labor market is tightening further rather than coming back into balance.
• The news drove bond yields up and stocks down, as investors put higher odds on further Fed interest rate increases. The Fed has been looking for openings to drift downward as a way to cool the job market without mass layoffs.

Yes, but: There is reason to think that the new openings number is an aberration and the real underlying story in the U.S. labor market is one of a gradual — very gradual — cooldown.

• Actual business hiring was basically unchanged in August, rising to 5.9 million people hired. The hiring rate was stable at 3.7%. The number of people who were laid off or quit was also flat in August.
• Moreover, the job openings number frequently displays volatility that doesn't seem to align with any underlying economic change. The rubber-meets-road indicators around actual hiring and layoffs are more stable.

Meanwhile, many other data points are consistent with a slowing labor market. The average of 150,000 jobs added to employers' payrolls in June, July and August was less than half the Q1 rate (312,000 a month).

• A survey of large-company CEOs by the Business Roundtable revealed a steep pullback in hiring expectations over the course of the year.

What they're saying: "Don't be fooled into thinking the longstanding cooldown in the labor market has suddenly reversed itself," said Nick Bunker with the Indeed Hiring Lab, in a note. The concentration of the surge in openings in a single sector, he said, is a strong hint that it reflects noise.

• "Yes, the job market is still retaining a lot of heat, but it hasn't gone back on the boil," said Bunker.

We've noted several times recently that a remarkable rise in longer-term bond yields over the last few months is likely to put a damper on growth, pummel the housing market and strain America's fiscal situation. It hasn't let up so far in October.

Driving the news: The rates surge has continued this week, with the 10-year Treasury yield up to 4.78% at noon ET today, up from 4.57% on Friday.

• It is driven not by higher inflation expectations but by higher real, inflation-adjusted rates.
• The yield on a five-year inflation-protected Treasury was 2.57% this morning. In its two-decade history, that security has only been higher briefly in 2007 and during the 2008 financial crisis.

The topic has been met with a deafening silence from top Federal Reserve officials. In the absence of any pushback, bond traders seem to assume that even the steep run-up in rates won't cause the central bank to back off its "higher-rates-for-longer" intentions.

• In speeches yesterday, for example, governor Michelle Bowman and vice chair for supervision Michael Barr did not mention the rates surge. Neither did chair Jerome Powell, in two public appearances over the last several days.

Yes, but: Bowman and Barr are more focused on bank regulation, so they usually would not be the officials to communicate a monetary policy message.

• And Powell's events have been a roundtable with teachers and a meet-and-greet with ordinary Americans in Pennsylvania, not the venues where he would typically send a policy signal.

Go deeper: Our colleague Matt Phillips notes an important shift underneath the bond market's moves. Investors in longer-term Treasury bonds are now demanding a "term premium" that had been negative in the last couple of years.