The Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey covering July was issued today, with the August employment report to follow on Friday. People pay a lot of attention to swings of a few thousand jobs or hires or separations and to me it is all pretty meaningless and within a margin of error. But what do I know. In any event, in July we had 7,271,000 job openings, which was up from the June number of 7,182,000; which was a 177,000 downward revision from the original number released last month. So technically the number of openings declined for the month and were lower than expected, but as I said, a few thousand on a base of over 7 million is pretty absurd to worry about.
Openings were up slightly in both the private sector and government. They were up more substantially against the year-ago July 2025 numbers. Manufacturing had a decent rise in openings, transportation a corresponding decline. Professional and business services and hospitality also fell, health services and social assistance rose. Total hires fell as did total separations, by about the same amount. Hires rose in construction and fell in manufacturing, financial activities and business services; separations changed in these sectors by around the same amounts. In short, a very non-dramatic month with little change in anything. (JOLTS Release)
