Job Openings Dropped in November JOLTS Report

Jan 9, 2018

The BLS’s JOLTS report showed an unexpected tick down in the current number of openings to 5.879MM in November from a slightly stronger 5.925MM openings in October. After peaking at a 17-year series high in September, openings the number of openings has declined for two consecutive months. As a result, the openings rate fell to 3.8% from 3.9% in October; the openings rate had held at 4.0% for the four months ended in September. Other details of the report also experienced some softening. The number of hires slowed and while the hires rate lost 0.1% to 3.7%, it remained in line with its prior 12-month average. Quits also cooled but not enough to pull the quits rate off of its cyclical high.