The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Report covering June was released yesterday. As a reminder, this data is based on surveys with low response rates. There are concerns about the accuracy of much of the economic data reported by the federal government, which have been enhanced with recent quits and layoffs at the responsible agency. Nonetheless, you can hope it is directionally correct. In June, the number of job openings, quits, fires, and hires was pretty unchanged in the big picture, particularly give statistical uncertainty.
Openings were up in retail, information services and state and local education and down in hotels, food service, health care, social assistance, finance and insurance. There are currently 422,000 more job openings than employed workers, which is a good sign of labor market health. Hires were down for the month, but quits were as well. No suggestions of an impending labor market collapse or a huge surge in new jobs or hirings for existing openings. (BLS Report)
