The number of positions waiting to be filled eased to 4.74 million, second only to August’s 4.85 million as the highest since January 2001, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The rate of hiring matched the strongest since the recession began and the number of Americans quitting their jobs also increased.

More openings reinforce signs that the labor market’s recovery is gaining traction, with job gains on pace for their best performance since 1999 and the unemployment rate at its lowest in more than six years. The figures are among those that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen uses to assess the employment picture and judge whether the economy is healthy enough to withstand a rise in interest rates.

“It’s all trending in the right direction” in the labor market, Brett Ryan, U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York, said before the report. “We still remain pretty positive here.”