9/9/2014
By Jennifer Coombs

The JOLTS report, which is the abbreviation for the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, provides a monthly headline number of job openings across all sectors. According to this latest report, the overall labor market remains quite sluggish. For the month of July, there were 4.673 million job openings, little changed from June's 4.675 million. The hires rate (3.5%) and the separations rate (3.3%) were unchanged in July and remain relatively low. Within separations, the quits rate (1.8%) and the layoffs and discharges rate (1.2%) were also unchanged. There were 4.872 million hires in July, compared to 4.791 million in June and the rate was 3.5 percent. Year over year, the number of hires (not seasonally adjusted) increased for total nonfarm and total private, but didn’t change much for government jobs. The hires level increased from a year ago for construction and retail trade jobs, but decreased for educational services. The number of separations was little changed from June for total nonfarm, total private, and government. We would like to see the number of quits substantially grow since it would mean that more workers feel comfortable enough to quit their jobs and look for new work. As it is, this latest JOLTS report will likely result in the doves at the Fed further advocating for easy monetary policies. However, according to the chart below, job openings have been substantially improving since the start of 2014 – looking further back, we are almost back to pre-recession levels.

Jennifer Coombs
Wall Street Strategies

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