We are still delayed on some key economic reports. The job openings and labor turnover survey for January was just released. You may recall the last release in this series showed a huge drop in openings. Well, this one showed a big jump, 396,000 new openings. So you decide if any of these surveys with low response rates is close to accurate. Finance and insurance showed the biggest increase in openings, contrary to the AI worries. Retailers also posted a substantial increase in openings, be a while before those AI robots can sell you things. Leisure and entertainment, health care and education also experienced rises. Professional and business services saw a 200,000 opening decline, and that could be AI related.
After opening a big gap in December between openings and unemployed persons, in January that gap closed by half. Nothing too dramatic in hires or quits. Fewer hires usually means openings stay, well, open, for longer. Voluntary quits are considered a sign of labor market strength. We also got full year 2025 estimates, which showed on average fewer openings in 2025 than in 2024, hires were down substantially in 2025 from 2024, but so were voluntary quits, which makes sense. If people don’t quit their jobs, employers don’t have to hire someone to replace them. Layoffs were up by over a million positions compared to 2024. So the labor market is kind of meandering along. Meanwhile, initial unemployment claims remain at a very low level. (BLS Release)
